A Psychometric Evaluation of the Achievement Emotion Questionnaire - Short Version in the Context of Italian Physical Education

Emotional states are fundamentally related to cognitive processes such as attention, perception, memory and learning, and they play a very important role in helping to assess daily challenges. Thus, we need tools that measure emotions in the context of Physical Education. In this study, we adapted and tested the factor structure of the Achievement Emotion Questionnaire - Short Version (AEQ-SV) in the Italian physical education context. We administered the AEQ-SV to 867 participants (<i>M</i> age = 16.43 years, <i>SD</i> = 1.23) enrolled in Italian physical education classes to analyze the questionnaire's psychometric properties using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM), an internal reliability analysis, and a criterion validity analysis. The AEQ-SV subscales consisted of eight emotions and 32 items. Reliability analyses revealed acceptable fit indices and adequate temporal stability. Linear regression analysis showed that positive emotions positively predicted academic performance, while negative emotions negatively predicted academic performance. These results are in line with research on the original scale, and these data support the use of the AEQ-SV in the Italian educational context.