Investigating Sport Attributional Style, Sport Self-Efficacy, and Creativity in Elite Team Athletes

Background: The current study aimed at investigating the relationships among three variables of sport attributional style, sport self-efficacy, and creativity to provide a theoretical model of relationships between these variables in elite team athletes based on the structural equation modeling. Objectives: Providing theoretical model of relationships between sport attributional styles, sport self-efficacy, and creativity in elite team athletes using structural equation modeling. Methods: The statistical population consisted of 2853 elite team athletes. Out of the population, 192 elite team athletes were randomly selected as the sample from different sport clubs in Tehran, Iran, in 2014. The sport-confident questionnaire, sport attributional style scale, and the creativity questionnaire were employed to collect the data. Then, AMOS version 23 was used to apply structural equation modeling. Results: The measurement and structural models (after success, after failure) of elite team athletes well fitted the data. Standard coefficients of all components and indices (questions) were significant (P < 0.05), except for direct coefficients between sport attributional style and creativity (P = 0.297 after success and P = 0.640 after failure). Conclusions: The current study results showed a positive significant relationship between sport self-efficacy and sport attributional styles. Moreover, sport self-efficacy had a mediating role between sport attributional styles and creativity. Thus, identifying structural relationships between these variables was of great benefit to promote athletes’ mental health.