The MeBTough for Adolescents (MeBT-Ad): Development and Validation

Background/Purpose: The Mental, Emotional and Bodily Toughness Inventory (MeBTough) was developed to measure toughness of university students and athletes (Mack & Ragan, 2008). MeBTough suffers from two issues. First, MeBTough's reading level and length could produce comprehension difficulties and participant fatigue for a younger sample. Second, MeBTough may not permit valid comparisons across gender (Gao, Mach, Ragan, & Ragan, 2012).   Therefore, the purpose of this study was to create a new MeBTough instrument for adolescents that is easier to understand, shorter in length, and void of gender bias.

Method: Researchers rewrote original MeBTough statements for adolescents and other athletes with lower reading levels.  A MeBTough creator reviewed these items and confirmed conformity to the constructs of the original instrument. The resulting MeBTough Adolescent (MeBT-Ad) was administered to high school student-athletes. Two online data collections were used to evaluate the MeBT-Ad.  First, high school student-athletes (n=74) participated in a two-stage data collection to test correlation between the MeBTough and MeBT-Ad. In stage one, participants took the MeBTough. Two weeks later, in stage two, the same student-athletes were randomly assigned to either MeBTough or MeBT-Ad; both groups also took a WORDSUM vocabulary test. The second data collection administered the MeBT-Ad to student-athletes (n=330) from four high schools in the Southeastern United States to evaluate the new instrument.  Researchers obtained informed consent and assent from all student-athletes and/or parents, as directed by IRB regulations prior to administering any instruments.

Analysis/Results: Analysis from the first data collection compared MeBTough scores (stage one) with either MeBTough or MeBT-AD scores (stage 2).  Results showed correlation between MeBT-Ad and MeBTough instruments (r=0.66; SE=5.3) was better than MeBTough and MeBTough (r=0.32; SE=7.8), likely due to reduced measurement error. Further analysis using WORDSUM scores demonstrated that this change was due to reduced reading levels on MeBT-AD. In the second analysis, chi-squared distribution tests and factor analysis were used to reduce the total items from 43 to 9. The resulting Reduced MeBT-Ad instrument was highly correlated with the full MeBT-Ad (r=0.903) without statistically significant gender differences.

Conclusions: Two new instruments were created: MeBT-Ad and a Reduced MeBT-Ad. MeBT-Ad presents MeBTough statements translated for adolescents with lower reading levels. Reduced MeBT-Ad improves measurement by reducing the number of items from 43 to 9 and eliminates the significant gender differences found in MeBTough and MeBT-Ad. These instruments will now allow accurate examination of adolescent student-athletes’ toughness without literacy, length or gender biases.