ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Motivational Climate in Sports and Physical EducationView all 5 articles
Validation of the Teaching Interpersonal Style Questionnaire in Physical Education
Provisionally accepted
Francisco Miguel Leo1*
David Sánchez Oliva2
Javier Fernandez-Rio3
Miguel A. López-Gajardo2
Juan J. Pulido2- 1University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain
- 2Universidad de Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain
- 3Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Although research in Physical Education (PE) has widely examined the role of teachers' motivational style, there is still a lack of validated instruments that jointly assess both the supportive and thwarting dimensions of interpersonal behaviors. This gap limits progress in understanding how teachers can either foster or undermine students' motivational processes in PE. Thus, this study aimed to provide evidence of validity for the Teachers' Interpersonal Style Questionnaire in Physical Education (TISQ-PE) as a multidimensional measure of students' perceptions of their teachers' interpersonal behaviors. A total of 54 Primary and Secondary education students participated (Mage = 11.96±1.95; 337 girls). A confirmatory factor analysis provided evidence of factorial validity, supporting the six correlated main factors of the scale (autonomy-support, competence-support, relatedness-support, autonomy-thwarting, competence-thwarting, and relatedness-thwarting). Evidence of convergent validity was supported by satisfactory average variance extracted values for all factors. Furthermore, the TISQ-PE provided evidence of discriminant and nomological validity and showed invariance by sex and educational stage. Lastly, all factors showed acceptable internal consistency values. Therefore, the TISQ-PE offers evidence of validity and reliability to assess students' perceptions of their teachers' interpersonal style in PE class, offering researchers and practitioners a comprehensive instrument to better understand both supportive and thwarting teaching behaviors.
Keywords: Basic psychological needs, Need support, Need thwarting, psychometric properties, self-determination theory
Received: 09 Sep 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Leo, Sánchez Oliva, Fernandez-Rio, López-Gajardo and Pulido. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Francisco Miguel Leo, franmilema@unex.es
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.