Psychometric Support for the Ownership in Exercise and Empowerment in Exercise Scales

This study’s purpose was to examine the psychometric properties of two new scales developed to quantitatively measure participants’ ownership in exercise classes and empowerment with respect to exercise. These two outcome measures will compliment Achievement Goal Perspective Theory (AGPT) grounded research to better understand participants’ exercise experiences. College exercise class participants (N = 414; Mage = 21.25 years; 67% female) completed the survey during the last two weeks of a semester. Measurement invariance was assessed by a two-group (i.e., male and female) confirmatory factor analysis and used Mplus’ cluster option to account for the data’s nested nature. Strong invariance was achieved, which provided psychometric evidence for the ownership and empowerment in exercise measures. Additional validity support was provided by the ownership and empowerment latent relationships aligning with the researchers a priori hypotheses. These results provide preliminary validity evidence for the Ownership in Exercise and Empowerment in Exercise Scales.