A few empirical studies focusing on the structure of sports culture explored the differences and sportification. These studies were mainly carried out on three research aspects. First, on the value and spirit dimension of sports culture. For example, Lee et al. (2000) developed the Youth Sport Values Questionnaire. Obasa and Borry (2019) analyzed the multivalence of the concept of spirit of sport. The more adequate study among them is the personality structure of sports events (Lee and Cho, 2012; De Vries, 2020). Secondly, on the direct exploring of sports culture’s structure. For example, Kaiser et al. (2009) used Structure Dimensional Analysis (SDA) as an innovative approach to understand the representation of culture-related knowledge in sport organizations. Culpepper and Killion (2015) applied the symbolic analysis to identify the general cultural categories of sports (i.e., movement forms, rules, and values). Thirdly, on the sub-sector of sports culture. For example, regional features of sports culture (Adedeji, 1979; Hargreaves, 1997; Sibaja, 2015), psychometric properties of sport participation (Beaton et al., 2011; Casper et al., 2011) and the structural properties of sport teams culture (Kao and Cheng, 2005; McEwan, 2017) were studied. However, previous studies have not been sufficient to reveal the structure of sports culture, which identifies the cultural function of sport and legitimizes it as a social institution (Kono, 1997). Therefore, there is a need to further investigate the conceptual system, measurement tools, and structural features of sports culture.

The psycho-lexical approach, which uses language to study culturally loaded words, is based on the assumption that the most important individual difference have been encoded into the natural language (Allport and Odbert, 1936). Based on studies that use the lexical paradigm, by following a standard procedure to extract the most common trait-related words from sufficiently large lexicon, and by asking respondents to indicate the extent to which these words represent their, or an acquaintance’s–personality, researchers across the world have been able to arrive at a near consensus about the main dimensions of personality (Goldberg, 1981). The lexical approach has been applied to several psychology domains, such as values (De Raad et al., 2017; Wilkowski et al., 2021), emotions (Macheta and Gorbaniuk, 2020), interpersonal interactions (Strachan et al., 2009), and communication styles (Labasse, 2001; De Vries et al., 2009), but it has rarely been applied to the sport psychology and sports culture domain. As noted above, such a lexical study may provide provides a way to explore the structure of sports culture.

The aim of our study is to uncover the psycho-lexical structure of sports culture. The lexical study on social scientific domain was conducted in three phases. In the first phrase, a preliminary selection of adjectives that pertained to sports culture was made. In the second phrase, a further reduction of the list of adjectives was made base on a panel of experts. In the third phrase, self-ratings were obtained on the list of adjectives selected. Guo and Qi (2017), by using the psychological vocabulary method, a total of 372 college students were investigated, and a total of 694 typical adjectives as carriers representing the three levels of people, things and incidents in sports culture were collected. After synonym classification and frequency sorting, 87 adjectives representing sports culture were obtained which could provide a basis for the next step to confirm the structure of sports culture. With regard to this research, the Chinese psycho-lexical project in the sports domain is discussed in the present study. The extracted psychological structure of sports culture would possibly pave the way for further empirical studies.

The sample 1 (n = 128 college students, 72 males and 56 females, M_age = 19.11, SD = 1.54) for item analysis were randomly selected from a university in Wuhan, China.

The sample 2 (n = 505 college students, 298 males and 207 females, M_age = 19.20, SD = 1.62) for factor analysis were randomly selected from two universities in Wuhan, China.

The sample 3 (n = 223 college students, 115 males and 107 females, M_age = 19.34, SD = 1.52) for test–retest reliability analysis were randomly selected from a university in Wuhan, China.

The trained graduate students of psychology explained the requirements of the survey using standard instructions emphasizing the authenticity, independence, and integrity of all answers.

According to the research requirements,SPSS21.0 software was employed to record data and for data processing.

To test the feasibility of revealing sports culture structures from the selected 87 adjectives, each adjective was first subjected to an item analysis. The critical ratio (CR) was employed as an index for item discrimination analysis. According to the t-test results, 10 adjectives (energetic, harmonious, stable, attentive, friendly, imaginative, promising, arrogant, conceited, and self-reliant) with significance levels of greater than 0.01 were eliminated. Finally, 77 adjectives with significant discriminability were obtained (Table 1).

Based on the item analysis results, the 77 remaining items were subjected to Bartlett’s test, which generated a value 2460.76 (p<0.01) and a KMO of 0.89. A principal component analysis was performed on the 77 adjectives. First, items with loads of less than 0.3 were eliminated, including muscular, tempered, disciplined, pragmatic, insightful, and fond of stimulation. Second, items with multiple comparable loads were removed, including social, healthy, open-minded, ambitious, and enterprising. The remaining items could be explained by six main factors with an explained variance of 57.69%. As shown in Table 2, 17 items were identified as factor F1 (extroversion-activity), 15 items were identified as factor F2 (diligence-progression), 12 items were identified as factor F3 (experience), ten items were identified as factor F4 (independence-excellence), five items were identified as factor F5 (enjoymen)t, and five items were identified as factor F6 (body culture),and corresponding explained variances were measured as 12.90, 11.64, 10.15, 9.27, 7.01, and 6.69%, respectively.

The six factors were analyzed further. Based on the items included in each factor, the first four items of each factor were subjected to second-order factor analysis. Factors with characteristic roots of greater than one were extracted (Tables 3–6). Analyses were performed using the above-described procedure.

A factor analysis was performed on the 17 items of factor F1. Three second-order factors were used to explain 61.78% of the total variance: F11 (cheerful): cheerful, optimistic, lively, interesting, and passionate; F12 (good-hearted): good-hearted, magnanimous, open, forthright, and bold; and F13 (extroverted): extroverted, talkative, impulsive, and excited; the three second-order factors of F1, respectively, explained 21.87, 20.06, and 19.93% of the variance. Three items, i.e., open-minded, courageous, and frank and outspoken, were eliminated due to the presence of multiple loads (Table 3).

A factor analysis was performed on the 15 items of factor F2. Three second-order factors were found to explain 53.25% of the total variance: F21 (courageous): indomitable, tolerant, valiant, aspiring, and fortitude; F22 (enterprise): persevering, active, pioneering, and eager to excel; and F23 (diligent): tireless, hardworking, respectful of the profession, and persistent; the three second-order factors of F2, respectively, explained 19.72, 16.96, and 16.56% of the variance. Two items, i.e., dedicated and dauntless, were removed due to the presence of multiple loads (Table 4).

A factor analysis was performed on the 12 items of factor F3. Two second-order factors were found to explain 46.39% of the total variance: F31 (mature): forgiving, sane, flexible, adaptive, and self-motivated; and F32 (group-oriented): team-spirited, articulate, valuing friendship, loyal to friends, and willing to help others; the two second-order factors of F3, respectively, explained 23.87 and 22.52% of the variance(Table 5).

A factor analysis was performed on the 10 items of factor F4. Two second-order factors were found to explain 58.16% of the total variance: F41(outstanding): perfectionist, continuously improving, advanced, striving for excellence, and seeking to better oneself; and F42 (independent): independent, confident, focused, opinionated, and person of character; the two second-order factors of F4, respectively, explained 29.47 and 28.69% of the variance (Table 6).

From the first- and second-order factor analyses, the psychological structure of sports culture was mostly confirmed (Table 7).

Cronbach α coefficients of the six main factors were found to range from 0.53 to 0.66. The high degree of variance in the adjectives denotes the homogeneous reliability of the structure. Six weeks later, a retest was performed on 93 undergraduate students. The test–retest reliability level was between 0.74 and 0.82 (Table 8).