Examining the Psychometric Properties of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale-Plus.

College student athletes are at risk for mental health difficulties. Athletic identity – the degree of strength and exclusivity to which a person identifies with the athletic role – is associated with health risk behaviors and mental health concerns broadly among student athletes. Given a variety of barriers to college athletes disclosing mental health difficulties, measuring athletic identity may be an indirect way to screen athletes for being at-risk for mental health concerns. The current study examined the factor structure of an increasingly popular measure of athletic identity (the AIMS-Plus) across two samples of self-identified athletes (N_study1 = 201; 60.2% male; 61.19% White; 21.39% Hispanic; N_Study2 = 175; 45.29% male; 70.86% White; 20.57% Hispanic) to offer a peer-reviewed validation of the measure. Results suggest that the factor structure of the AIMS-Plus was not supported; however, both a modified version of the AIMS-Plus (the AIMS-Plus-R) and the 7-item AIMS may be acceptable. Continued work refining measures of athletic identity is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]