Validation and psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese dispositional flow scale 2 (DFS-BR)

Introduction: Flow state is a psychological concept used to describe the optimal engagement in different activities. Therefore, the DFS-2 has been developed as an instrument to measure an individual’s dispositional tendency to flow state as a personality trait. Objective: Aiming to obtain an adapted version of the DFS-2 for the Brazilian-Portuguese language (DFS-BR) and for general activities, we performed its forward- and backward-translation, and we validated it. Methods: After gathering answers from 681 Brazilian participants, we performed: (1) the construct validity of the DFS-BR; and (2) the psychometric item quality analysis. Results: the Confirmatory Factorial Analysis (CFA) indicates the best fit for the gathered data is a nine multi-correlated factorial model (χ(2)/df = 4.23, CFI = 0.94, TLI = 0.93 and RMSEA = 0.069). Reliability tests performed in this structure indicates excellent internal consistency for the DFS-BR. The item quality analysis indicates that its difficulty and discriminating parameters have a good endorsement to estimate the dispositional flow state. Additionally, we proposed and validated a short version of the DFS-BR (composed of only nine items). The validation results indicates good fit (χ(2)/df = 2.94, CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.97 and RMSEA = 0.053) and good internal consistency. The Test Information Curve of the short version indicates that it is very informative in the estimation of individual dispositional flow state. Discussion and Conclusions: In view of these results, we conclude that the DFS-BR showed good evidence of its validity to be used with Brazilian people. We also suggest the use of a short version when we need only measure the person’s flow state based on the principle of Occam’s razor. This principle is supported by the analysis presented in this article.