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Group cohesion reworded: measuring group cohesion perceptions in sport

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Abstract

Group cohesion in sport is often measured via questionnaires that have been created based on the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985, Journal of Sport Psychology, 7,244–266). Still, when assessing the items of these questionnaires more closely, it is evident that several items are not congruent with the theoretical definition of group cohesion. The aim of the current study was thus to reword those items within the German questionnaire KIT-L (Ohlert, 2002, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 10(1),39–51) and test the new wordings for reliability and validity. Two surveys were conducted to examine the internal consistency as well as the concurrent and discriminant validity of the reworded items compared with the original items. Team satisfaction, performance, social integration and team trust were included as external validity criteria. Reliability analyses and confirmatory factory analysis showed that the new items possess adequate internal validity and model fit. The concurrent validity analysis revealed mostly medium-sized correlations with team satisfaction and performance. The discriminant validity analysis showed that the new instrument clearly distinguishes from behavioural concepts like social integration. Thus, the newly constructed questionnaire KIT-L2 is a valid instrument to measure group cohesion in sport that corresponds with the underlying theory.

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Notes

  1. In project 1, the interview questions contained: ‘(a) the personal meaning of cohesion to group members, (b) the behavioural manifestation they could cite to reflect cohesion, (c) the incidents that group members recalled which would denote a low level or absence of cohesion and (d) factors that contributed to the development of cohesion on the respondents’ team’ (Carron et al., 1985, p. 249). In project 2 and 3, the open ended questions were ‘about why people join groups, leave groups, or stay with groups’ (Carron et al., 1985, p. 250).

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Sebastian Braun for his assistance in collecting data used in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The German Research Centre of Elite Sport — momentum, German Sport University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50733, Köln, Germany

    Jeannine Ohlert PhD & Jens Kleinert

  2. Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50733, Köln, Germany

    Jeannine Ohlert PhD, Chloé Kleinknecht & Jens Kleinert

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  1. Jeannine Ohlert PhD
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  2. Chloé Kleinknecht
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Correspondence to Jeannine Ohlert PhD.

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Ohlert, J., Kleinknecht, C. & Kleinert, J. Group cohesion reworded: measuring group cohesion perceptions in sport. Sportwiss 45, 116–126 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12662-015-0364-1

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