Development and Validation of Parental Support Scale of Children’s Sports Training in China: Socio-Ecological Approach

OBJECTIVES: To promote Chinese children participation in sports training and acquisition of sports skills, we combined a social ecological research framework with parental support to develop the Parental Support for Children’s Sports Training Scale (PSCSTS). METHODS: The scale was initially developed based on literature review, group interviews, and expert evaluations. A complete reliability and validity test was conducted on 1,594 parents of primary and secondary schools in Shanghai. RESULTS: The PSCSTS has 37 questions, and exploratory factor analysis has formed 10 factors: policy support, parents’ financial support, community support, media support, sports development, school activity participation, parents’ exercise habits, training quality support, development of school sports activities, learning skills. The higher-order models constructed by validated factor analysis fit well (χ(2)/df = 2.130, RMSEA = 0.038, SRMR = 0.042, GFI = 0.911, CFI = 0.928). The Parents of children of different sexes have measurement invariance in the PSCSTS. CONCLUSION: The PSCSTS developed in this study based on a social-ecological framework has high reliability and validity, and can be used as a comprehensive measure of parental support for their children’s sports training.