Physical literacy (PL) refers to “the motivation, confidence, physical ability, knowledge and understanding to value and actively participate in physical activity (1).” Physical literacy is the ability of an individual to achieve a healthy lifestyle (2), and is very important for the development of an individual's physical and mental health (3). In 2015, the International Physical Literacy Association (IPLA) issued a consensus statement on physical literacy (4), which was supported by more than 1,300 sports organization leaders and experts. The IPLA considers physical literacy to have four interconnected and essential elements: motivation and confidence (emotional domain), physical ability (physical domain), knowledge and understanding (cognitive domain), and behavioral participation in lifelong physical activity (behavioral domain) (4). Individuals with higher levels of physical literacy will be more confident and capable of participating in various physical activities (5), while individuals with lower levels of physical literacy will have less physical activity behaviors (6).

Taking physical literacy as an important means to promote individual physical activity, it is necessary to use physical literacy assessment tools to help understand people's physical literacy level (7). In the past two decades, scholars in different countries have developed some physical literacy assessment tools or assessment models. Such as Canadian Agility and Movement Skill Assessment (CAMSA) (8), physical literacy assessment for youth tools (PLAY) (7), Canadian assessment of physical literac (CAPL) (9), Portuguese Physical Literacy Assessment Questionnaire (15–18 years old), Australia's physical literacy assessment model based on Structure of the observed learning outcome (SOLO) (10). However, because different assessment tools are based on different conceptual models, they are applicable to different ages and populations. For example, the three physical literacy assessment tools in Canada (CAMSA, PLAY, CAPL) and Portugal's (PPLA-Q) are designed according to the stage and continuous characteristics of children and adolescents' growth and development (8, 9, 11). CAPL is suitable for 8–12 years old, PLAY is suitable for 7–12 years old, CAMSA is suitable for 8–12 years old, PPLA-Q is suitable for 15–18 years old. Australia has established an assessment model based on the “SOLO classification theory” to observe the performance results of various elements of physical literacy in specific situations, which can be applied to all groups of people, but there is still no specific quantitative assessment tool. Although some scholars have proposed that developing individual physical literacy in early life is more conducive to participation in sports and physical activities throughout life, the structural model of physical literacy should not be limited to children and early adolescents, and more ages and groups should be explored to achieve People maintain purposeful physical pursuits and activities throughout life (12).

In China, the physical health of students has attracted the attention of the government. According to the latest national student physical fitness test data, college students are the group with the largest number of students in all academic stages whose physical fitness test scores do not meet the national test requirements (13). Under this realistic background, the physical literacy assessment of college students may provide tools and directions for further promoting the physical health of college students and accurately intervening in the physical health of college students in the future. To our knowledge of published articles, there are currently few tools available for assessing physical literacy in college students.

Zhao (14) constructed a structural model of adolescent physical literacy evaluation (14) from four dimensions of sports knowledge, sports habits, sports conditions, and sports spirit. However, this evaluation model is quite different from the IPLA's definition of the conceptual model of physical literacy. Ma et al. (15) used the Perceived Physical Literacy Instrument (PPLI) for validation among Chinese college students (15). Although this study showed that PPLI had better construct validity and reliability in 622 Guangdong college students, whether PPLI adaptation for more Chinese college students remains to be further explored. First of all, the modeling population of PPLI is professional physical education teachers, and its evaluation content is very professional in sports. Secondly, PPLI uses Cantonese, and its language habits are quite different from Mandarin, which is currently mainly used in China. The validation samples used in this study were also from Cantonese-speaking regions. In addition, in the assessment tools of physical literacy of children and adolescents, most motor skills tests are used to reflect the physical ability of individuals, such as PLAY and CAPL. However, some scholars believe that more motor skills tests may not be conducive to large-scale assessment of physical literacy. On this basis, they proposed that the use of self-reported motor skill levels may facilitate the development of large-scale physical literacy assessments (12).

Therefore, in order to meet the needs of large-scale physical literacy assessment of Chinese college students, we aimed to design a preliminary questionnaire to identify the physical literacy of Chinese college students (College student physical literacy questionnaire, CSPLQ). Then collect the validity evidence of the questionnaire to measure its validity in the physical literacy assessment of Chinese college students, so as to objectify and quantify the subjective and qualitative college students' physical literacy.

This paper provides evidence for the validity of the CSPLQ. Evidence of content validity is provided for all processes from defining the domain, constructing definitions, generating items for expert review and response processes, content structure analysis, and relationships with other variables (25). For item generation, we referred to existing physical literacy assessment tools because they have good comprehension and a good classification of indicators. However, we found some differences in the structure of the assessment models between the different tools. For example, Australia's structural model of physical literacy assessment consists of four domains: physical, mental, social and cognitive (10). The physical literacy measure developed by the Canadian Care for Life project has five physical, behavioral, cognitive, psychological and social dimensions (26). The physical literacy assessment tool developed by the Canadian Lifetime Sport Program is divided into a professional, coaching, parent and self-test version and contains four main dimensions: physical, behavioral, psychological and cognitive (9). The Canadian Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group designed a physical literacy assessment tool that includes physical, behavioral, psychological and cognitive dimensions (9), and Allan constructed a physical literacy assessment tool that focuses on athletes and includes physical, behavioral, cognitive, psychological and social dimensions. In order to obtain more agreement from Chinese scholars, we chose Li 's division of the physical literacy structure, which is currently more agreed by Chinese scholars in this field, and divided the dimensions of physical literacy measurement into four domains: emotional, physical, cognitive and behavioral domains. Most of the experts involved in this study had knowledge related to sport measurement and evaluation or physical literacy research, which was a strength of our study, but given that our study was an initial exploratory study aimed at designing a validated self-report questionnaire on physical literacy, our team endeavored to describe our objectives and methods to the experts in order to provide them with a deeper understanding of the assessment of physical literacy among university students.

We designed a forty-three-item preliminary questionnaire based on the literature and recommendations from a three-person expert panel. The experts were asked to rate and make suggestions on the relevance, clarity and comprehensiveness of the questionnaire items. After this process, two observation points of “daily lying time” and “frequency of physical activity in a week” have been deleted, and two observation points have been modified, such as “body shape preference” being changed to “aesthetic preference,” and “activity participation” being changed to “activity” appreciation.” Since this process leaves only two entries in both dimensions of our behavioral domain, we naturally expect that it might be less effective later on. But considering that we can also continue to judge their effectiveness through content structure analysis, we keep these dimensions and entries. During the response process, the college students we invited helped to revise the description of the questionnaire, so that our question and answer description methods were more in line with the language habits and acceptance methods of college students. After evaluation, the description of Q24 “I have mastered the knowledge of sports safety protection” was changed to “I have mastered the knowledge of sports safety protection,” and the Q36 “I like watching various sports events” was changed to “I like watching various sports activities very much (competition).”

To verify the stability of this structure, we validated it in another sample of university students. The results of the model fit showed that the content structure of the CSPLQ was relatively stable. As there was no Mandarin version of the College Student Physical Literacy Questionnaire for us to make reference to the relationship between the relevant variables, we chose some variables from the Physical Esteem Scale and Physical Activity Behavior to observe the relationship between physical literacy and them. The results showed that the correlation coefficients between physical literacy and other variables, including athletic ability, physical condition, physical attractiveness, physical fitness, frequency of physical activity and length of physical activity among university students, reached a significant level of P < 0.05. This indicates that our questionnaire may be effective in assessing the physical literacy of college students. However, we do not suggest weighted scores for the final scale, and we think this is a question that needs to be further investigated in follow-up studies. Although this study proposes a valid college student self-reported questionnaire to identify college students' physical literacy, there are still some limitations and weaknesses that can be considered for future research. For example, although almost all of our experts know something about physical literacy, none of them has actually done research on physical literacy assessment, so the authority of our experts may affect the validity of our questionnaire. At the same time, we have only two items in one dimension. Although their validity has been verified by other samples, we hope to expand the evaluation items of this dimension in future research. And our sample size is relatively small, and the research sample can be further expanded in the future. Future research could also add test-retest checks to increase the reliability of the questionnaire. Finally, the strength of our research is to open up a new method to objectify the physical literacy of college students, which is a valid self-report questionnaire of college students to identify their physical literacy. Therefore, our study is the first step in developing a standard questionnaire.

The CSPLQ has sufficient validity evidence. The development of this tool shows that this tool has validity evidence for its content, response process, internal structure and relationship with other variables.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Review and Approval of the Academic Committee of the Physical Education College of Guizhou Normal University (No. 20210310). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

LL conceived the study and performed the data analysis and interpretation. LL and NS prepared the manuscript. JYU, CL, LZO, LZA, SL, XG, and JYA were involved in data collection. JH and XZ were involved in the revision and guidance of the paper. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

This research was funded from the East China Normal University-Zhongxu Postdoctoral Workstation Fund (No. 2019001), the Guizhou Provincial Department of Education Youth Growth Project Fund (Qianjiao He KY [2021] 291), the Guizhou Province Education Planning Fund Project (2021A058), and Guizhou Normal University Teaching Content and Curriculum System Reform Project ([2021]xjg, No. 03).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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