Sport and Exercise Psychology: A Critical introduction ... - Routledge

USING IMAGINATION IN SPORT
measure of “visual imagery of movement itself and imagery of kinaesthetic sensations”
(Isaac et al., 1986, p. 24). Each of the items presents a different movement or
action to be imagined (e.g., riding a bicycle). Respondents are required to rate these
items in two ways: “watching somebody else” and “doing it yourself”. The ratings
are given on a five-point scale where 1 = “perfectly clear and as vivid as normal
vision” and 5 = “no image at all”. Although not extensive, available evidence
suggests that the VMIQ satisfies conventional standards of psychometric adequacy.
Eton et al. (1998) reported that it had high internal consistency coefficients (e.g., 0.97
for the total scale) and a test-retest reliability score of 0.64 (for the “other” subscale)
to 0.80 (for the “self” score) over a two-week interval. Lequerica et al. (2002) reported
a high internal consistency value of 0.95 for the visual imagery subscale and 0.97 for
the kinaesthetic imagery subscale. An amended version of this test called the
Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire-2 (VMIQ-2) was published by
R. Roberts et al. (2008) (see Box 5.6).
Box 5.6 A new test of movement imagery in athletes: revising the Vividness
of Movement Imagery Questionnaire
Although the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire (VMIQ: Isaac
et al., 1986) has been one of the most popular and psychometrically sound
imagery tests used in sport psychology, it has several limitations that were
identified by R. Roberts et al. (2008). First, the VMIQ appears to confound two
different imagery modalities – visual and kinaesthetic. Thus it requires respondents
to imagine performing movements themselves but does not instruct them
to use the kinaesthetic modality rather than the visual one, even though first
person visual imagery (IVI) and kinaesthetic imagery are regarded as separate
modalities (Fourkas et al., 2006b). Second, as the visual imagery subscale of the
VMIQ requests respondents to imagine someone else performing actions (as
distinct from watching oneself performing these actions), it fails to measure
adequately external self-imagery. Third, the VMIQ has not been subjected to
confirmatory factor analysis – a technique commonly used to investigate the
construct validity of a psychometric test. To address these problems, R. Roberts
et al. (2008) developed the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire – 2
(VMIQ-2). This test consists of twelve items and assesses the ability to form
mental images of a variety of movements visually and kinaesthetically. The
visual component is further subdivided into “external” and “internal” visual
imagery. Respondents are required to imagine each of the twelve movements
and to rate the vividness of each item on a Likert-type scale from 1 (“perfectly
clear and vivid”) to 5 (“no image at all”). The VMIQ-2 displays impressive
factorial validity and acceptable concurrent and discriminate validity.
Turning to the MIQ-R (C. Hall and Martin, 1997), this test is especially
interesting for sport researchers because it was designed to assess individual
differences in kinaesthetic as well as visual imagery of movement. Briefly, this test
contains eight items which assess people’s ease of imaging specific movements
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