Development of a Cohesion Inventory for Children's Sport Teams

The purpose of the present study was to develop an inventory designed to measure cohesion in children’s (ages 9 –12) sport teams. In order to carry out this task, a three-phase research program was undertaken. Phase 1 involved the use of focus groups with 35 (nmales 14, nfemales 21) children, open-ended questionnaires with 132 (nmales 63, nfemales 69) children, and a literature review in order to better understand children’s perceptions of the concept of cohesion. Phase 2 involved using information gathered from Phase 1 in order to develop potential items and determine their content validity. In Phase 3, factorial validity was established using confirmatory factor analyses with an independent heterogeneous sample (n 298) of child sport participants. The result is the final version of the Child Sport Cohesion Questionnaire (CSCQ) containing 16 items that assess both task and social cohesion.