Intention for Warm-Up among Children and Adolescents Scale: Development and Initial Validation

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Intention for Warm-up among Children and Adolescents Scale (IWCAS). There were four phases and four sets of participants in the development of the IWCAS. In the first phase, the domains of intention were defined, and related components were developed, organized, and validated. In the second phase, 446 elementary and middle school students participated in a pilot study for the first version of the scale, which was revised based on the information obtained. In the third phase, 12 graduates in sports pedagogy served on an expert panel and organized the items into domain areas and developed a second version of the IWCAS. In the final phase, 1322 elementary and middle school students from three k-12 schools completed the revised version of the IWCAS, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Based on the results, the IWCAS was shortened by deleting some items in two domains; this resulted in 11 items of the final version with 3 domains: (1) attitude toward warm-up, (2) subjective norm, and (3) perceived behavioral control that, according to the indices, generate reliable and structurally valid scores. The composite internal consistency for the three domains ranged from 0.74 to 0.85. The researchers hypothesized the IWCAS is a valid and reliable scale, which can be used by P.E. teachers or coaches to evaluate the intention of primary and secondary school students to perform warm-ups.