Assessing Reinvestment Tendencies in Athletes: Psychometric Validation of Decision- and Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scales

Abstract

Reinvestment Theory proposes that excessive conscious control over movement execution or decision making can disrupt automaticity and contribute to performance breakdown under pressure. Despite its clinical relevance in sport psychology, culturally validated measures of reinvestment remain limited. This study examined the psychometric properties of adapted versions of the Decision-Specific Reinvestment Scale (DSRS) and Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS) in a sample of athletes and physically active individuals. Participants were 259 undergraduate sport science students (M_age = 20.34 years). Data were analyzed using item discrimination indices, confirmatory factor analyses, convergent validity tests, and internal consistency estimates. Item-level analyses supported the removal of one item from each scale. The resulting DSRS comprised 12 items across two factors (decision reinvestment and decision rumination), and the MSRS comprised nine items across two factors (conscious motor processing and movement self-consciousness). Both scales demonstrated acceptable to good reliability and evidence of factorial and convergent validity. These findings support the use of the adapted DSRS and MSRS as clinically informative tools for assessing vulnerability to performance disruptions under pressure in sport and performance settings.