The Short Form of the Sports Competition Rumination Scale (SCRS-SF) for Applied Sport Psychology and Research

Abstract: The present study aimed to develop a short form of the German version of the Sports Competition Rumination Scale (SCRS; Michel-Kröhler et al., 2023 , Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 35‍(2), 265 – 283) for the application in future research and applied sport psychology. Thus, we pooled data for 901 competitive athletes (female = 448, male = 451, diverse = 2; age range = 16 – 68 years) from different sports and used three complementary approaches for item selection: (1) specific item characteristics, (2) exploratory factor analysis, and (3) comparisons with the item selection of a goal-directed rumination scale containing the same items in relation to a different context. The results indicated a three-item solution containing the core characteristics of rumination (i. e., repetitiveness, intrusiveness, uncontrollability). In addition, we compared the validity of the short form (SCRS-SF) with the original validation sample ( N = 198). In sum, the SCRS-SF is a time-saving, reliable, and valid alternative to measure sport-specific rumination in athletes.