Psychobiosocial Experiences in Physical Education: A Semantic Differential Scale

The objective of this study was to develop and validate the Psychobiosocial Experience Semantic Differential in Physical Education (PESD-PE) scale, a new holistic measure of discrete emotion-related feelings (i.e., psychobiosocial experiences) as conceived within the individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF) framework. A preliminary version of the PESD-PE was administered to 336 students (171 girls, 165 boys), while the final version was administered to a new sample of 352 students (186 girls, 166 boys) aged 14–19 years. Overall, findings provided evidence of factorial and construct validity for a model containing 33 items loading into 11 modalities, with 3 items each. Convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity of the PESD-PE was also found. This new measure of discrete experiences will help increase our knowledge about the reciprocal effects between emotion-related feelings and performance, and will also inform practical interventions aimed at creating more adaptive psychobiosocial experiences in accordance with physical education goals.