Examining physical literacy in young adults: psychometric properties of the PLAYself

The PLAYself is a commonly utilized tool to assess physical literacy in child and adolescent populations. Currently, there are no measurement tools designed to examine physical literacy among adults. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine the psychometric properties of PLAYself subsections in a sample of young adults. Two hundred forty-five young adults (ages 18–25) from the United States completed the PLAYself questionnaire. Multiple principal component analyses using pro-max rotation were utilized to assess the current factor structure of the PLAYself subsections. Each subsection was analyzed in-dependently to explore individual summary components. PLAYself subsections were assessed for reliability using Cronbach’s α, inter-item correlations, and item-total correlations. A multi-factor structure was identified for each PLAYself subsection. A 2-factor structure was identified for the Environment subsection accounting for 55.2% of the variance. A 2-factor structure was identified for the Physical Literacy Self-Description subsection accounting for 57.1% of the variance. A 3-factor structure was identified for the Relative Ranking of Literacies subsection accounting for 70.3% of the variance. The Environment, Physical Literacy Self-Description, and Relative Ranking of Literacies subsections demonstrated poor (α = 0.577), good (α = 0.89), and acceptable (α = 0.79) internal consistencies, respectively. The Physical Literacy Self-Description subsection demonstrated the best psychometric properties in our sample, and thus may be an appropriate tool to assess physical literacy in a young adult population until additional measurement tools are developed.