ABSTRACT
Delineating the psychological factors that discriminate expertise levels is important to understanding disparate competitive outcomes. Empirically based knowledge of critical enduring psychological factors that underpin expertise will permit the advancement of evidence-based recommendations to aid in development of the psychological skills necessary to sustain consistent expert performance. Psychological factors are typically assessed using self-report interviews and questionnaires, but they can also be inferred through myriad physiological indices and overt motor behaviors. A comprehensive review of methods used to measure the psychological factors germane to sport performance could easily substantiate a separate text in and of itself (cf. Tenenbaum et al., 2012). Accordingly, we have been intentionally selective to emphasize the strengths and limitations of measures of psychological factors featured in the expertise literature. We have also attempted to avoid redundancy with material featured in other sections of this book by omitting measurements pertaining to discrete attentional skills (see Chapters 6–8). General considerations for the development of sound psychometrics are overviewed, and then foundational psychological influences on sport behavior are summarized. Measures of motivational factors, dispositional characteristics, and psychological performance “profiles” are then summarized. The chapter concludes by reviewing measures of dispositional attentional characteristics.
