Validation of the Dutch Acute Recovery and Stress Scale and the Short Recovery and Stress Scale

Background/aim: In sports, validated instruments are needed to monitor recovery and stress processes in athletes. (1) Recent proposals for monitoring tools include the Acute Recovery and Stress Scale (ARSS) and the Short Recovery and Stress Scale (SRSS). (2) These questionnaires were designed to assess the multidimensional aspects of recovery and stress on a daily basis. Initial research indicated good reliability and validity of the instruments in the German and English cohorts. In this study, we aimed to extend the psychometric properties by incorporating the recovery-stress state of athletes into one confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and replicating the earlier procedure among Dutch and Belgian athletes to determine the structural validity. (2) We followed the Consensus-based Standards for the selection of Health Measurement Instruments criteria.
Methods: Six translators translated the ARSS and SRSS in a parallel back-translation procedure, after which we determined their structural validity with multiple CFA models (i.e., first-order, bifactor, and higher-order) and by replicating the CFA models used in earlier studies, (2) internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha, and construct validity through correlations between the ARSS and SRSS and the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes (RESTQ-Sport).
Results: The Dutch version showed a sufficient model fit for the eight scales of the ARSS with the higher-order recovery-stress approach (root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .09, comparative fit index (CFI) = .82, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .80, and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = .10), a good model fit for the replicated analysis (RMSEA = .07, CFI = .93, TLI = .91, SRMR = .06), and satisfactory internal consistency (α = .75 – .87). The correlations within and between the ARSS and SRSS, as well as between the ARSS/SRSS and the RESTQ-Sport (r = .31 – -
.77 for the ARSS, r = .28 – -.63 for the SRSS) also supported construct validity.
Conclusions: These combined findings support the use of the Dutch ARSS and SRSS to assess recovery and stress in sports-related research and practice. However, scale validation is an ongoing process; thus, future studies could extend the psychometric properties further by increasing the model fit by testing different models in other populations.
References:
1. Kellmann M, Kallus K. Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes: User Manual. Human Kinetics;
2001.
2. Kellmann M, Kölling S. Recovery and Stress in Sport: A Manual for Testing and Assessment.
Routledge; 2019.