Validation of the Children's Active Play Imagery Questionnaire (CAPIQ)

Abstract

The present study examined the convergent and discriminant validity as well as the factorial structure of the Children's Active Play Imagery Questionnaire (CAPIQ; Cooke et al., 2014), which assesses three types of imagery (capability, social, fun) used during active play. Participants included 194 male and female students (9-14 years of age) from five elementary schools. They completed the CAPIQ, the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale for Children (Moore et al., 2009), two subscales from the Sport Friendship Quality Scale (Weiss & Smith, 1999), the Sport Imagery Questionnaire for Children (Hall et al., 2009), and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 for Children (Stadulis et al., 2002). Spearman correlation coefficients revealed that all three subscales from the CAPIQ were positively correlated with enjoyment in physical activity, elements of friendship quality, all five functions of sport imagery, and confidence – thus providing support for convergent validity. Additionally, fun imagery and social imagery were negatively associated with cognitive anxiety – thus supporting discriminant validity. Results from the Confirmatory Factor Analysis provided support for the factor structure of the CAPIQ. The findings reported in this study provide evidence that the CAPIQ is a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing children's imagery use in their active play.