Sport Emotion Questionnaire (SEQ)

Abstract

The Sport Emotion Questionnaire (SEQ) is a specialized, self-report psychological scale designed to measure the intensity of five discrete emotions experienced by athletes in a pre-competitive emotion setting. Developed by Jones and colleagues (2005), the SEQ is an essential tool in sport psychology research, allowing for the quantitative assessment of anger, anxiety, dejection, excitement, and happiness. Its items are empirically grounded in the psychological experiences of athletes facing competition, making it a highly relevant and valid instrument for studying the emotion-performance relationship.

Keywords

Sport Emotion Questionnaire, SEQ, Sport psychology, Pre-competitive emotion, Affect, Emotion measurement, Anxiety, Performance

Authors

Marc V. Jones, Andrew M. Lane, Steven R. Bray, Mark Uphill, James Catlin

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Sport Emotion Questionnaire (SEQ) is to provide a reliable and valid sport-specific measure of immediate pre-competitive emotion states. It is specifically designed to capture the emotional profile of athletes in the critical moments leading up to an athletic competition, a period known to significantly influence performance outcomes.

The SEQ assesses five distinct emotional factors: anger, anxiety, dejection (negative states), excitement, and happiness (positive states). While the instrument was originally validated for assessing feelings related to an upcoming competition, it has also been successfully employed in research settings to evaluate recalled emotions in a sport context (Vast, Young, & Thomas, 2010), provided researchers acknowledge the original validation parameters.

Construct

The SEQ measures discrete, momentary emotional states relevant to the athletic experience, aligning with a multidimensional and context-specific view of emotion in sport. These states are conceptualized as five distinct factors, which capture both unpleasant and pleasant affective responses.

The overarching construct is the immediate, subjective emotional experience of the athlete in response to the demands and context of an impending competition. This focus on specific, discrete emotions—rather than general mood or trait anxiety—emphasizes the transient and context-dependent nature of competitive affect, distinguishing the SEQ within the landscape of sport psychology measurement tools.

Validity

Comprehensive validation tests have been conducted on the SEQ (Jones et al., 2005) to establish its robustness as a psychological scale for athletic populations. These tests addressed several key forms of Validity, crucial for ensuring the measure accurately captures the intended construct.

Specifically, the authors reported strong evidence for face validity, confirming that the items appear relevant to the athletes being tested; robust content validity, ensuring the scale adequately samples the domain of pre-competitive emotion; factorial validity, supporting the underlying five-factor structure of the scale; and concurrent validity, demonstrating that scores correlate appropriately with other established measures of emotion or related psychological constructs.

Reliability

While specific internal consistency coefficients (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha) are detailed within the primary validation paper (Jones et al., 2005), the successful development and subsequent widespread adoption of the SEQ confirm that the instrument possesses high levels of internal reliability. High internal consistency is consistently reported within each of the five subscales (Anger, Anxiety, Dejection, Excitement, Happiness), indicating that the items measuring each specific emotional factor function cohesively.

Furthermore, research utilizing the SEQ has generally supported adequate test-retest reliability, provided the competitive context remains stable, demonstrating that the measure provides consistent results when administered across relevant pre-competition time points.

Factor Analysis

The foundational study by Jones et al. (2005) utilized factor analysis to establish the underlying structure of the SEQ. This rigorous statistical approach confirmed the presence of five distinct and independent factors, ensuring the scale is measuring five discrete emotional states rather than a single general affective dimension.

The five factors identified through the analysis correspond directly to the five subscales: Anxiety, Dejection, Excitement, Anger, and Happiness. This strong, differentiated factor structure provides critical evidence for the measure’s construct validity and its utility in distinguishing between various emotional experiences in competitive sport.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire / Sport-specific emotional state measure

Format: 22 items, 5-point Likert scale (Ranging from 0 = Not at all, to 4 = Extremely)

Language Available: Primarily English

Population Group: Athletes / Sport performers

Age Group: Typically competitive adolescents and adults

Population Details: Individuals participating in competitive sport settings, assessed specifically regarding their feelings about an upcoming competition.

Test Methodology: Respondents are instructed to indicate how they feel “right now, at this moment, in relation to the upcoming competition.” Scores for each subscale are calculated by averaging the item responses comprising that factor.

Keywords

Anger, Anxiety, Dejection, Excitement, Happiness, Affective states, Psychometrics, Sport performance

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not specified in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Refer to primary publication (Jones et al., 2005) for corresponding author details.

Correspondence Address: Refer to primary publication (Jones et al., 2005).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 2005

Permissions and Fees: The SEQ is generally utilized as a publicly available academic instrument for non-commercial research purposes, provided appropriate citation is given. Commercial use or formal permission requests should be directed to the primary author, Marc V. Jones.

Note on Usage: Although the scale is primarily validated for pre-competition assessment, the response stem can be adapted to refer to current or previous competition states. However, researchers using these modified instructions should conduct appropriate psychometric checks.

Reference’s

• Jones, M. V., Lane, A. M., Bray, S. R., Uphill, M., & Catlin, J. (2005). Development and validation of the sport emotion questionnaire. Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology, 27, 407-431.

• Hanin, Y. L. (2000). Emotions in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

• Lazarus, R. S. (2000). How emotions influence performance in competitive sports. The Sport Psychologist, 14, 229-252.

• Vast, R. L., Young, B. W., & Thomas, P. R. (2010). The utility of the SEQ for assessing recalled emotion in sport settings.

Items of the Sport Emotion Questionnaire (SEQ)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Below you will find a list of words that describe a range of feelings that sport performers may experience. Please read each one carefully and indicate on the scale next to each item how you feel right now, at this moment, in relation to the upcoming competition. There are no right or wrong answers. Do not spend too much time on any one item, but choose the answer which best describes your feelings right now in relation to the upcoming competition.

Scoring Instructions:

Anxiety = (uneasy + tense + nervous + apprehensive + anxious)/5

Dejection = (upset + sad + unhappy + disappointed + dejected)/5

Excitement = (exhilarated + excited + enthusiastic + energetic)/4

Anger = (irritated + furious + annoyed + angry)/4

Happiness = (pleased + joyful + cheerful + happy)/4