Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2)

1. Abstract

The Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) is one of the most prominent and widely administered psychometric self-report instruments in the field of sport psychology. Developed by Rainer Martens, Robin S. Vealey, and Damon Burton in 1990, the instrument was engineered to operationalize Multidimensional Anxiety Theory (MAT) within competitive athletic environments. Prior to its introduction, competitive anxiety was predominantly assessed as a unidimensional construct, an operationalization that frequently yielded inconsistent and contradictory findings regarding the relationship between pre-performance arousal and athletic execution. The CSAI-2 addresses this conceptual limitation by bifurcating competitive state anxiety into two distinct empirical components—Cognitive State Anxiety and Somatic State Anxiety—while simultaneously measuring a third, related construct: State Self-Confidence.

The inventory consists of 27 items evenly distributed across three 9-item subscales. Respondents rate each statement using a four-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Not at all) to 4 (Very much so), resulting in separate subscale scores that each range from 9 to 36. Psychometric evaluations across diverse athletic populations have generally supported the internal consistency of the three dimensions, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .79 to .83 for cognitive anxiety, .82 to .88 for somatic anxiety, and .87 to .90 for self-confidence. Despite subsequent structural critiques—which led to the psychometric refinement known as the Revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2R) by Cox, Martens, and Russell (2003)—the original 27-item CSAI-2 remains a foundational cornerstone for research investigating the temporal patterning of pre-competition stress, the efficacy of psychological skills training, and the differential impact of mental versus autonomic arousal on motor performance.

2. Keywords

Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory-2, CSAI-2, competitive state anxiety, cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, state self-confidence, sport psychology, psychometrics, athletic performance, multidimensional anxiety theory, pre-competition arousal, Rainer Martens

3. Authors

The Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory-2 was formally introduced by a team of pioneering researchers in sport and exercise psychology:

• Rainer Martens, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and founder of Human Kinetics Publishers. Martens spearheaded the empirical study of competitive stress in youth and elite sports, authoring the seminal precursor Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT).
• Robin S. Vealey, Ph.D.: Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Nutrition, and Health at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio). A distinguished scholar known for her theoretical and empirical models of sport confidence, imagery, and mental skills training.
• Damon Burton, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus in the Department of Movement Sciences at the University of Idaho. Burton is widely recognized for his theoretical contributions to goal-setting, cognitive restructuring, and competitive anxiety modeling.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the CSAI-2 is to provide a standardized, psychometrically sound diagnostic and evaluative measure of an athlete’s acute psychological and physiological state immediately prior to or during competitive athletic events. During the early developmental era of sport psychology, researchers relied heavily on generalized anxiety measures such as Charles Spielberger‘s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). However, generalized scales lacked ecological and situational validity when applied to the unique pressures, evaluative threats, and physiological activation patterns inherent to competitive sports. Furthermore, unidimensional measures collapsed autonomic arousal and cognitive concern into a single composite score, obscuring the distinct ways these psychological subsystems influence performance.

To overcome these limitations, the CSAI-2 was designed to serve both applied clinical and empirical research objectives:

• Clinical and Applied Diagnoses: Sport psychologists and mental conditioning specialists utilize the CSAI-2 to isolate the specific etiology of an athlete’s pre-game distress. By differentiating between cognitive apprehension (e.g., catastrophizing, fear of failure) and somatic hyperactivity (e.g., hyperventilation, tremors, gastrointestinal disturbance), practitioners can design targeted interventions. For instance, athletes presenting elevated somatic anxiety with low cognitive disruption benefit more from somatic relaxation techniques (such as progressive muscle relaxation or biofeedback), whereas those exhibiting high cognitive worry require cognitive restructuring, rational-emotive approaches, or attentional refocusing.
• Temporal Tracking in Research: The CSAI-2 provides a baseline for investigating the temporal patterning of anxiety leading up to competition. Empirical studies repeatedly demonstrate that while cognitive anxiety remains relatively stable days and hours prior to competition unless the athlete’s subjective probability of success changes, somatic anxiety spikes sharply in the final hours and minutes before the competitive event begins.
• Performance Outcome Prediction: Under Multidimensional Anxiety Theory, cognitive anxiety is hypothesized to demonstrate a negative linear relationship with athletic execution, somatic anxiety exhibits an inverted-U relationship (consistent with the Yerkes-Dodson law), and state self-confidence displays a positive linear relationship. The CSAI-2 allows empirical testing of these non-uniform behavioral predictions across diverse sports disciplines.

5. Psychological Construct

The CSAI-2 operationalizes competitive state anxiety as a tri-factor construct composed of three distinct yet interacting psychological and physiological domains: Cognitive State Anxiety, Somatic State Anxiety, and State Self-Confidence.

Cognitive State Anxiety

Cognitive state anxiety represents the mental and subjective component of anxiety. It is formally defined as conscious awareness of negative expectations, self-doubts, perceived inability to achieve personal goals, and apprehension regarding evaluation, failure, or negative social judgment. In competitive contexts, cognitive anxiety reflects attentional disruption and rumination over performance consequences. Athletes experiencing elevated cognitive anxiety frequently engage in internal dialogues highlighting the probability of defeat or social embarrassment.

Within the CSAI-2, cognitive state anxiety is captured through items such as:

• “I am concerned that I may not do as well in this competition as I could do” (Item 7)
• “I am concerned about choking under pressure” (Item 13)
• “I’m concerned that others will be disappointed with my performance” (Item 22)

Somatic State Anxiety

Somatic state anxiety represents the athlete’s subjective perception of the physiological, autonomic, and neuroendocrine activation triggered by competitive stressors. This dimension corresponds directly to sympathetic nervous system arousal and the fight-or-flight response, manifesting as muscular tension, increased cardiac activity, galvanic skin response, visceral gastrointestinal sensations, and motor restlessness. Unlike cognitive anxiety, which involves conceptual processing and internal appraisal, somatic anxiety is an experiential reflection of visceral feedback.

Representative items indexing somatic state anxiety on the CSAI-2 include:

• “I feel jittery” (Item 5)
• “My body feels tense” (Item 8)
• “My heart is racing” (Item 17)
• “I feel my stomach sinking” (Item 20)

State Self-Confidence

State self-confidence was introduced into the CSAI-2 framework following factor analytic findings indicating that positive performance expectancies operate as an independent psychometric vector rather than merely the negative polar opposite of cognitive anxiety. State self-confidence is defined as an athlete’s acute belief, certainty, or subjective expectation regarding their capability to execute motor skills, successfully overcome competitive obstacles, and achieve desired athletic objectives during the impending event.

Athletes with high state self-confidence display psychological resilience, adaptive coping mechanisms, and efficient attentional resource allocation, which buffer against the debilitating effects of somatic arousal. Illustrative CSAI-2 self-confidence items include:

• “I feel self-confident” (Item 9)
• “I’m confident I can meet the challenge” (Item 15)
• “I’m confident coming through under pressure” (Item 27)

6. Theoretical Framework

The architecture of the CSAI-2 is rooted in Multidimensional Anxiety Theory (MAT), which emerged during the late 1970s and 1980s as sport psychologists sought to move beyond unidimensional models of arousal (such as Drive Theory and early formulations of the Inverted-U Hypothesis). Early conceptualizations (e.g., Martens’ SCAT, 1977) treated competitive anxiety as an undifferentiated general trait. However, cognitive psychology and psychosomatic medicine (e.g., Liebert & Morris, 1967; Borkovec, 1976; Davidson & Schwartz, 1976) demonstrated that affective states comprise distinct cognitive and physiological response systems that can decouple under stress.

Martens, Vealey, and Burton (1990) applied this separation to sport psychology, positing three central theoretical tenets:

1. Cognitive-Somatic Independence: Cognitive state anxiety and somatic state anxiety are evoked by different situational cues and decay at different rates. Cognitive anxiety is triggered by perceived evaluative threat, subjective probability of failure, and task difficulty. Somatic anxiety is conditioned to conditioned environmental stimuli (e.g., entering the stadium, the sound of the starting whistle) and reflects conditioned physiological arousal.
2. Temporal Dynamics: Prior to competition, cognitive anxiety can fluctuate widely if expectations of success change, but in the absence of new informational inputs, it remains relatively stable over the 24 to 48 hours preceding an event. Somatic anxiety, by contrast, remains low until approximately 1–2 hours before the start of the competition, escalates precipitously as start time approaches, and dissipates rapidly once the motor task commences.
3. Differential Performance Relationships: The core hypothesis of MAT is that the three dimensions correlate differently with athletic performance:
   • Cognitive Anxiety: Hypothesized to have a direct negative linear relationship with motor performance, as cognitive interference, attentional narrowing, and divided cognitive capacity degrade strategic decision-making and automated motor control.
   • Somatic Anxiety: Hypothesized to demonstrate an inverted-U curvilinear relationship, where moderate physiological arousal facilitates motor output, but excessive or deficient autonomic activation leads to coordination breakdown or lethargy.
   • State Self-Confidence: Hypothesized to display a positive linear relationship with performance, acting as an psychological buffer that protects against choking under pressure.

While subsequent theoretical frameworks—such as Lew Hardy’s Three-Dimensional Catastrophe Model and Yuri Hanin’s Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF)—challenged the simplicity of these independent linear relationships, the CSAI-2 provided the empirical measurement framework that made testing, refining, and advancing these modern theories possible.

7. Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the CSAI-2 has been investigated in hundreds of psychometric and applied sport studies over the past three decades.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the original validation cohorts comprising over 1,000 high school, collegiate, and elite athletes (Martens et al., 1990), construct validity was established by correlating CSAI-2 subscales with established measures of trait anxiety, state anxiety, and personality constructs. The CSAI-2 subscales correlated moderately with Spielberger’s State Anxiety Inventory (A-State; $r = .50$ to $.65$). Crucially, the Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT)—which measures competitive trait anxiety—demonstrated higher correlations with cognitive state anxiety ($r \approx .55$) and somatic state anxiety ($r \approx .58$) than with generalized non-sport trait anxiety scales, providing evidence of domain-specific convergent validity.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity between the subscales was demonstrated through inter-scale correlation analyses. Cognitive state anxiety and somatic state anxiety regularly exhibit a moderate positive correlation ($r = .45$ to $.65$), indicating that while they share common variance under acute competitive stress, they do not reflect a single undifferentiated construct. State self-confidence demonstrates a moderate to strong negative correlation with cognitive anxiety ($r = -.50$ to $-.68$) and a weak to moderate negative correlation with somatic anxiety ($r = -.25$ to $-.40$).

Criterion and Predictive Validity

Predictive validity regarding athletic performance has yielded complex findings. Early laboratory and field studies (Burton, 1988) supported the linear decrement model for cognitive anxiety and the inverted-U pattern for somatic anxiety. However, broader meta-analyses, notably by Craft, Magyar, Becker, and Feltz (2003) across 29 studies ($N = 2,905$), and Woodman and Hardy (2003), identified small overall effect sizes linking CSAI-2 scores directly to performance outcomes ($r = -.01$ to $-.14$ for cognitive anxiety; $r = -.03$ to $.00$ for somatic anxiety; $r = .25$ to $.36$ for self-confidence).

These findings revealed that competitive anxiety does not impact motor performance in isolation. Moderators such as sport type (individual vs. team, open vs. closed motor skills), task duration, skill level, and directional perceptions (whether an athlete perceives their anxiety symptoms as debilitative or facilitative, as conceptualized by Graham Jones and colleagues) play an essential role in mediating this relationship.

8. Reliability

The CSAI-2 exhibits strong psychometric reliability across competitive levels, genders, and age categories.

Internal Consistency

Across the baseline validation samples reported by Martens et al. (1990), internal consistency estimates (Cronbach’s alpha, $\alpha$) consistently exceeded conventional psychometric standards ($lpha ge .70$):

• Cognitive State Anxiety: Values typically range from $\alpha = .79$ to $.83$.
• Somatic State Anxiety: Values typically range from $\alpha = .82$ to $.88$.
• State Self-Confidence: Values consistently achieve the highest reliability coefficients, ranging from $\alpha = .87$ to $.90$.

Cross-cultural and linguistic adaptation studies—including validated translations in Spanish, French, Greek, Portuguese, and Chinese—have mirrored these findings, reporting internal consistency estimates ranging between .75 and .91 across all three subscales.

Test-Retest Stability Considerations

Because the CSAI-2 is designed explicitly as a state measure, traditional long-term test-retest reliability assessments (e.g., across weeks or months) are psychometrically inappropriate. An athlete’s state anxiety naturally fluctuates in response to changing contextual variables, competitive importance, opponent difficulty, and psychological readiness. However, when administered across short time intervals under baseline conditions devoid of acute stressors (e.g., during stable training phases), short-term temporal stability coefficients range from $r = .65$ to $.80$, confirming sufficient baseline measurement consistency.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural composition of the CSAI-2 has been the subject of extensive psychometric investigation, moving from initial exploratory procedures to contemporary structural equation modeling.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During its initial development, Martens et al. (1990) conducted iterative exploratory factor analyses (principal factors extraction with varimax and oblique rotations) on an initial pool of 102 items. This empirical trimming reduced the instrument to 27 items that loaded clearly onto three primary factors representing Cognitive Anxiety, Somatic Anxiety, and State Self-Confidence. Factor loadings for retained items exceeded .40 on their target construct, with minimal secondary cross-loadings ($< .25$).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Criticisms

Subsequent psychometric examinations using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) challenged the construct purity of several original items. In a landmark study, Cox, Martens, and Russell (2003) evaluated the factorial validity of the CSAI-2 using structural equation modeling across a diverse sample of 3,310 athletes. The initial 27-item, 3-factor model failed to achieve standard criteria for good fit:

• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation ($ ext{RMSEA}$) exceeded .07.
• Comparative Fit Index ($ ext{CFI}$) and Non-Normed Fit Index ($ ext{NNFI}$) hovered around .85 to .88, falling below the modern threshold of .90 to .95.

CFA parameter estimates revealed that several items displayed low primary loadings, substantial error covariance, or conceptual cross-contamination. In particular, Item 14 (“My body feels relaxed”) demonstrated psychometric instability because it was the sole reverse-coded item on the somatic subscale, creating an artifactual method effect. Other items, such as Item 1 (“I am concerned about this competition”) and Item 25 (“I’m concerned I won’t be able to concentrate”), exhibited poor discriminant performance between cognitive anxiety and somatic arousal.

The Revised CSAI-2 (CSAI-2R)

In response to these CFA findings, Cox et al. (2003) eliminated 10 psychometrically problematic items, establishing the CSAI-2R (17 items). The refined model features:

• 5 Cognitive Anxiety items
• 7 Somatic Anxiety items
• 5 Self-Confidence items

This revised model achieved excellent fit indices ($ ext{CFI} = .95$,$ ext{NNFI} = .94$,$ ext{RMSEA} = .048$), providing an efficient, structurally validated alternative. Nonetheless, the original 27-item CSAI-2 remains extensively utilized in comparative research and longitudinal datasets worldwide.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report Inventory (State Measure)
• Target Population: Adolescent and adult competitive athletes (ages 14+ across amateur, scholastic, collegiate, and elite/professional levels)
• Item Count: 27 items (CSAI-2 original); 17 items (CSAI-2R variant)
• Subscales (9 items each in the CSAI-2):
  • Cognitive State Anxiety: Items 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25
  • Somatic State Anxiety: Items 2, 5, 8, 11, 14 (reverse-scored), 17, 20, 23, 26
  • State Self-Confidence: Items 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27
• Response Scale: 4-point Likert-type scale:
  • 1 = Not At All
  • 2 = Somewhat
  • 3 = Moderately So
  • 4 = Very Much So
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Item 14 Reverse-Coding: In the original CSAI-2 scoring system, Item 14 (“My body feels relaxed”) is reverse-scored: $1 \rightarrow 4$, $2 \rightarrow 3$, $3 \rightarrow 2$, $4 \rightarrow 1$.
  • Subscale Sums: Subscale raw scores are calculated by summing the scores of the corresponding 9 items. Each subscale yields a score range of 9 to 36.
  • Absence of Global Score: No single composite total score should be calculated. Summing cognitive, somatic, and confidence items into an aggregate score contradicts the multidimensional theoretical framework and invalidates empirical interpretation.
• Administration Time: Typically requires 3 to 7 minutes. Standard administration protocol advises completing the inventory between 1 hour and 15 minutes prior to warm-up or competition start.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Publication Year: The CSAI-2 was formally published in 1990 in the seminal reference volume Competitive Anxiety in Sport by Rainer Martens, Robin S. Vealey, and Damon Burton through Human Kinetics Publishers (Champaign, IL).

Permissions & Copyright Status: The original instrument and its diagnostic manual are copyrighted by Human Kinetics Publishers and the contributing authors. For non-commercial academic research, student theses, and non-profit educational applications, the CSAI-2 and CSAI-2R are widely made accessible within standard literature and institutional repositories under fair-use scholarly guidelines, provided complete formal citation is given. Commercial distribution, inclusion within for-profit digital platforms, or proprietary clinical test batteries requires formal written permission and licensing agreements from Human Kinetics.

12. References

• Burton, D. (1988). Do anxious swimmers swim slower? Reexamining the elusive anxiety-performance relationship. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 10(1), 45–61. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.10.1.45
• Cox, R. H., Martens, M. P., & Russell, W. D. (2003). Measuring anxiety in athletics: The Revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory–2. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 25(4), 519–533. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.25.4.519
• Craft, L. L., Magyar, T. M., Becker, B. J., & Feltz, D. L. (2003). The relationship between the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 and sport performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 25(1), 44–65. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.25.1.44
• Hardy, L. (1990). A catastrophe model of performance in sport. In J. G. Jones & L. Hardy (Eds.), Stress and Performance in Sport (pp. 81–106). John Wiley & Sons.
• Jones, G., Swain, A., & Hardy, L. (1993). Intensity and direction dimensions of competitive state anxiety and relationships with performance. Journal of Sports Sciences, 11(6), 525–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640419308730023
• Martens, R. (1977). Sport Competition Anxiety Test. Human Kinetics Publishers.
• Martens, R., Burton, D., Rivkin, F., & Simon, J. (1980). Reliability and validity of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI). In C. H. Nadeau, W. C. Halliwell, K. M. Newell, & G. C. Roberts (Eds.), Psychology of Motor Behavior and Sport—1979 (pp. 91–99). Human Kinetics Publishers.
• Martens, R., Vealey, R. S., & Burton, D. (1990). Competitive Anxiety in Sport. Human Kinetics Publishers.
• Vealey, R. S. (1986). Conceptualization of sport-confidence and competitive orientation: Preliminary investigation and instrument development. Journal of Sport Psychology, 8(3), 221–246. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsp.8.3.221
• Woodman, T., & Hardy, L. (2003). The relative impact of cognitive anxiety and self-confidence upon sport performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Sciences, 21(6), 443–457. https://doi.org/10.1080/0264041031000101071

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)