Turkish Version of the Academic and Athletic Identity Scale: Cultural Adaptation and Validation

A groundbreaking study published in Frontiers in Psychology on April 8, 2026, introduces the validated Turkish version of the Academic and Athletic Identity Scale (AAIS-Tr), offering a crucial tool for understanding the multifaceted identities of students within Turkey’s sports science faculties. This research addresses a significant gap in the existing literature, providing a psychometrically sound instrument to assess how students navigate their academic pursuits alongside their athletic endeavors. The study, conducted by a team of researchers from Istanbul Gelişim University and other institutions, meticulously adapted and validated the AAIS for the Turkish cultural and linguistic context.

The imperative for cross-cultural adaptation of psychological instruments cannot be overstated. As the original research article highlights, differences in culture, language, and educational systems can profoundly influence how individuals interpret and respond to scale items. Without careful adaptation and validation, the reliability and accuracy of measurements can be compromised, leading to potentially misleading conclusions. This Turkish adaptation of the AAIS is a testament to the commitment to ensuring that psychological constructs are accurately measured within specific cultural frameworks, allowing for more meaningful and comparable research across diverse populations.

The AAIS-Tr was developed to address the unique challenges faced by students in sports science programs. These students are often expected to excel in both their academic studies and their athletic careers, creating a dynamic interplay between their academic and athletic identities. The scale aims to capture this interplay, recognizing that these two facets of identity are not necessarily separate but can be interwoven and mutually influential.

Rigorous Adaptation and Validation Process

The research team embarked on a comprehensive process to translate and validate the original AAIS, developed by Yukhymenko-Lescroart in 2014. This involved a multi-stage approach to ensure linguistic and conceptual equivalence. Initially, the original English-language scale was translated into Turkish by three linguists with expertise in English linguistics. Subsequently, a linguist experienced in scale adaptation translated the Turkish versions back into English to ensure consistency with the original instrument.

Following the linguistic translation, the adapted Turkish scale underwent rigorous content and language validity assessments. Six experts – three language specialists and three sports science experts – evaluated the translated items. They rated each item’s suitability, leading to the calculation of Content Validity Index (CVI) values. The item CVI (I-CVI) for several items was 0.83, while others achieved a perfect 1.00. The overall scale CVI (S-CVI) was calculated at 0.91, indicating a strong consensus among experts regarding the content validity of the Turkish version.

The core of the validation process involved statistical analysis of data collected from 130 students enrolled in sports science programs at Istanbul Gelişim University. The sample, comprising 39.2% female and 60.8% male participants, was selected through convenience sampling, a common practice in scale adaptation studies where the focus is on psychometric properties rather than population parameter estimation. The sample size exceeded the recommended minimum for factor analysis, ensuring sufficient statistical power.

Statistical Findings: Ensuring Reliability and Validity

The study employed a suite of statistical methods to ascertain the reliability and validity of the AAIS-Tr. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to examine the underlying structure of the scale within the Turkish context. The EFA results confirmed a two-factor structure, mirroring the original scale, with factors identified as Academic Identity (AI) and Athletic Identity (SI). The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of 0.91 and a statistically significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity (p < 0.001) indicated that the data were highly suitable for factor analysis. Parallel analysis further supported a two-factor solution, explaining a substantial 75.44% of the total variance. Factor loadings for the AI subdimension ranged from 0.651 to 0.988, and for the SI subdimension, from 0.790 to 0.948, demonstrating strong item loadings.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was then utilized to verify the two-factor structure identified by EFA. The CFA results yielded acceptable fit indices, including a Chi-square/degrees of freedom ratio (χ²/df) of 2.069, Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI) of 0.908, Incremental Fit Index (IFI) of 0.970, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) of 0.960, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) of 0.970, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.091, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) of 0.042. While the RMSEA value of 0.091 suggests the model fit is not perfect and warrants caution, the other indices indicate a generally acceptable fit for the two-factor structure in the Turkish population.

Reliability analyses were also robust. The overall Cronbach’s Alpha for the AAIS-Tr was an impressive 0.95. The sub-scales demonstrated excellent internal consistency, with Academic Identity (AI) scoring 0.911 and Athletic Identity (SI) achieving 0.962. McDonald’s omega coefficients further corroborated these findings, with values of 0.913 for AI, 0.963 for SI, and 0.966 for the total scale. Corrected item-total correlations ranged from 0.599 to 0.842, indicating that each item adequately contributed to the overall construct. Test-retest reliability, assessed over a three-week interval with a subset of participants, yielded a high intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.969 (p < 0.001), confirming the scale’s temporal stability.

Measurement Invariance Across Gender

A critical aspect of scale validation is ensuring that the instrument measures the same construct across different demographic groups. The study conducted multi-group CFA to test for measurement invariance across gender. The analyses explored configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance. While the initial configural model’s fit indices were not ideal, the subsequent analyses indicated that the scale’s item-factor structure, factor loadings, intercepts, and error variances were largely equivalent between male and female participants. The changes in fit indices across increasingly constrained models (ΔCFI ≤ 0.005; ΔRMSEA ≤ 0.011) suggest approximate measurement invariance. This finding is crucial, as it implies that the AAIS-Tr can be used to meaningfully compare academic and athletic identities between male and female students in Turkey.

Implications for Research and Practice

The successful adaptation and validation of the AAIS-Tr hold significant implications for both academic research and practical applications within Turkey. For researchers, the availability of this validated scale opens avenues for a deeper understanding of identity development among sports science students. Studies can now explore the relationships between academic and athletic identities and other variables such as academic performance, athletic achievement, psychological well-being, and career aspirations. Furthermore, the AAIS-Tr facilitates cross-cultural comparisons, allowing researchers to investigate how cultural factors might influence the construction of academic and athletic identities among Turkish students compared to their counterparts in other countries.

From a practical standpoint, the AAIS-Tr can serve as a valuable assessment tool for universities and sports organizations. By identifying students who may struggle to balance their dual roles, institutions can develop targeted support systems. This could include enhanced academic advising for student-athletes, tailored psychological support services, and programs designed to foster a more integrated sense of self. The scale’s brevity, comprising only 11 items, makes it an efficient tool for regular assessment within educational and athletic settings.

Future Directions and Limitations

Despite the robust findings, the study acknowledges certain limitations. The reliance on convenience sampling from a single institution restricts the generalizability of the results to the broader Turkish student population. Future research should aim to recruit larger, more diverse samples from various regions and institutions across Turkey to enhance external validity. Additionally, while the two-factor structure was supported, some model fit indices suggest that further refinement might be beneficial. Future studies could re-examine the factor structure with larger and more diverse samples.

The study also suggests avenues for future research, including exploring the applicability of the AAIS-Tr to different populations, such as sports high school students and professional athletes. Investigating the relationships between academic and athletic identities and other key variables like academic performance, athletic success, and psychological well-being is also a promising direction. Such research could provide valuable insights into the holistic development of individuals involved in both academic and athletic pursuits.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Turkish version of the Academic and Athletic Identity Scale (AAIS-Tr) has been successfully adapted and validated for use among Turkish university students in sports science faculties. The scale demonstrates strong reliability and validity, with a clear two-factor structure representing academic and athletic identities. The confirmed measurement invariance across gender further enhances its utility for comparative research. The AAIS-Tr represents a significant contribution to the field of quantitative psychology in Turkey, providing a much-needed instrument to explore the complex interplay of academic and athletic identities and supporting both academic inquiry and practical interventions for student-athletes.