The Determination of Validity and Reliability of the Persian Version of Talent Development Environment Questionnaire in Sport

Talent development in sports is a long-term process. One of the most important issues in this context is talent development environment which is affected by different factors. In this regard, some tools have been developed to assess talent development environment in sports. The present study aimed at determining the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the questionnaire of talent development environment in sport. The Martindale et al. questionnaire (2010) was used in this study. The population consisted of all male athletes in Markazi province who exercised regularly. The statistical sample consisted of 384 athletes who were selected by simple random sampling method. For data analysis, factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha tests were used in SPSS version 22 and LISREL version 8.8. The results confirmed the construct validity of the questionnaire with six factors including long-term development, quality preparation, communication, support networks, challenging environment and long-term development fundamentals and the obtained model had a good fit (RMSEA=0.037 , CFI=0.92, AGFI=0.92, x2/df=1.93). In addition, the reliability of the questionnaire was α=0.927, which was appropriate. Hence, this questionnaire can be a useful tool to assess the status of the talent development environment in sport. Therefore, it is recommended that it should be used in sport in Iran.