Table of Contents
Abstract
The Injury-psychological readiness to return to sport Scale (I-PRRS) is a specialized psychometric instrument designed to evaluate an athlete's self-efficacy and psychological preparedness to resume athletic participation following a physical injury. Historically, sports medicine professionals and clinicians relied on generalized trait sport confidence measures, which often failed to capture the unique, situational anxiety and confidence deficits specifically associated with injury recovery. By providing a targeted, state-specific assessment, the I-PRRS bridges a critical gap in the field of sport psychology and athletic training.
This instrument allows athletic trainers and sports psychologists to quantify an athlete's psychological readiness, helping to mitigate the risks of premature return to play, such as reinjury, compensatory injuries, or performance anxiety. The scale conceptualizes readiness not as a static trait, but as a dynamic state that fluctuates throughout the rehabilitation process. By measuring confidence in specific domains—such as the ability to give maximum effort and trust in the injured body part—the I-PRRS provides actionable clinical data to guide the final stages of athletic rehabilitation.
📊 Psychometric Scorecard
6
Unidimensional
📍 United States
Authors
Purpose
While physical rehabilitation protocols for athletic injuries are well-established and rigorously tested, the psychological dimensions of recovery are frequently overlooked in clinical practice. Injured Athletes often experience diminished self-efficacy and heightened anxiety about reinjury, which generalized confidence scales are ill-equipped to measure because they assess baseline personality traits rather than situational states. The I-PRRS was developed specifically to address this situational context, offering a rapid, targeted tool for clinicians to gauge whether an athlete possesses the necessary psychological resilience to safely re-enter practice and competition environments.
Construct
The scale is theoretically grounded in self-efficacy theory, specifically focusing on situational confidence within the context of sports injury recovery. Rather than treating sport confidence as a stable, enduring personality trait, the I-PRRS conceptualizes psychological readiness as a dynamic, state-dependent construct that naturally fluctuates throughout the rehabilitation timeline.
The instrument captures multiple facets of this psychological readiness, including the athlete's confidence in their injured body part's structural integrity, their perceived ability to perform without debilitating pain, and their capacity to meet competitive demands while exerting maximum effort. By isolating these specific cognitive appraisals, the construct aligns with broader psychometric literature suggesting that domain-specific self-efficacy is a stronger predictor of behavioral outcomes (like safe return to play) than generalized confidence.
Validity
The psychometric validation of the I-PRRS utilized a multi-faceted approach, beginning with robust content validity established through a three-round Delphi method with sports medicine experts. This process yielded strong item-content relevance, with the final six items achieving excellent V coefficients ranging from 0.79 to 1.00.
Concurrent validity was demonstrated through significant negative correlations with the Profile of Mood States (POMS) Total Mood Disturbance scores across four distinct recovery phases, aligning with the theoretical expectation that higher situational confidence inversely relates to mood disturbance. Furthermore, external validity was supported by strong positive correlations between the self-reported scores of the 22 injured Athletes and the independent readiness ratings provided by their athletic trainers, indicating that the scale captures psychological states that are observable to clinical professionals.
Convergent & Discriminant Validation Correlations
| Reference Instrument | Correlation Coefficient (r) |
|---|---|
| Profile of Mood States (POMS) short form – Total Mood Disturbance | Negative correlation |
Reliability
While the foundational study establishes strong content and concurrent validity, the preliminary validation phase did not report traditional internal consistency metrics, such as a Cronbach's alpha or McDonald's omega coefficient, for the six-item scale.
However, the instrument demonstrated a logical sensitivity to clinical change over time, which speaks to its reliability as a state measure. Scores predictably troughed immediately post-injury and steadily climbed as Athletes approached their return to practice and competition. To fully establish the scale's reliability profile, subsequent psychometric research must evaluate its internal consistency and establish test-retest reliability estimates during periods where clinical change is not expected.
Factor Analysis
The initial psychometric evaluation of this instrument did not employ exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate its latent structure. Instead of relying on statistical dimension reduction techniques, the author utilized a qualitative Delphi method with a panel of seven experts to distill an initial pool of 22 items down to the final 6 based on content relevance.
Because structural equation modeling was not utilized in this preliminary phase, standard fit indices such as the CFI, TLI, or RMSEA are not available, and the scale is treated as a unidimensional measure of psychological readiness based on expert consensus. Future psychometricians should prioritize factor analytic studies to empirically confirm the scale's presumed unidimensionality and explore potential sub-factors.
Instrument
| Test Type | Self-report questionnaire |
| Format | 6 items, 0-100 response scale with intervals of 10 |
| Scoring | Sum the 6 item scores and divide by 10. Total score ranges from 0 to 60. |
| Language | English |
| Population | Athletes |
| Age Group | 18-22 years |
| Administration | Self-administered by the athlete (also features a parallel clinician-rating version for Athletic Trainers) |
| Completion Time | A couple of minutes |
Scoring & Interpretation Guidelines
| Scoring Instructions | Sum the scores of all 6 items and divide the total by 10. |
| Cut-off Scores | A score of 60 implies utmost confidence, 40 implies moderate confidence, and 20 implies low overall confidence to return to sport. |
Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale Items
Items are currently not available
The individual items of this scale are not publicly available. Researchers interested in using this instrument should contact the original authors directly to request the scale materials.
Sample
The validation sample consisted of 22 collegiate varsity Athletes (18 men, 4 women) aged 18 to 22 from NCAA Division II and III schools, who had missed at least 1 week of practice due to injury. The expert panel for the scale's development included 4 certified athletic trainers and 3 NCAA Division III coaches.
Cite This Paper
Douglas D. Glazer (2009). Injury-psychological readiness to return to sport Scale. Journal of Athletic Training. https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-44.2.185
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Cite this article
Mohammed looti (2026). Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Retrieved from https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/injury-psychological-readiness-to-return-to-sport-scale/
Mohammed looti. "Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 13 Aug. 2026, https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/injury-psychological-readiness-to-return-to-sport-scale/.
Mohammed looti. "Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 2026. https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/injury-psychological-readiness-to-return-to-sport-scale/.
Mohammed looti (2026) 'Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale', PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Available at: https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/injury-psychological-readiness-to-return-to-sport-scale/.
[1] Mohammed looti, "Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale," PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, vol. X, no. Y, ص Z-Z, August, 2026.
Mohammed looti. Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. 2026;vol(issue):pages.