Construction and content validity of the coaches ’ knowledge and competence questionnaire-CKCQ

The validation of this questionnaire is an important tool for analyzing the knowledge and skills of coaches, as well as a better understanding of their practice context. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to establish the content validity of the Coaches’ Knowledge and Competence Questionnaire (CKCQ). Five specialists with doctorate degree for at least 10 years, academic experience and periodicity of publications with the theme in national and international journals participated in the validation process. Specialists evaluated 38 items of the questionnaire and assigned a score on a 1-5 point likert scale for each item in the language clarity, practical pertinence and theoretical relevance criteria. The content validity coefficient (CVC) was used to determine the CVCI of items and the CVCt of the total instrument of each criterion, adopting cutoff point of 0.81. The approximate results found for language clarity (0.92), practical pertinence (0.99) and theoretical relevance (0.98) presented values considered almost perfect and appropriate for validation. The content validation of the CKCQ is an important alternative for the evaluation of the knowledge and competences of sports coaches.


INTRODUCTION
The role of the sports coach as a fundamental element in the success of athletes and sports teams has been increasingly valued and recognized in the sports environment 1,2 .The performance of sports coaches requires mastery of a set of knowledge and skills that involve not only aspects specific of their area of intervention, but also the ability to interact and relate to other actors in the sports context, the ability to reflect and make decisions about their own practice 1,3 .
In fact, due to the complex nature of the coach's action and to the holistic nature of his intervention context 4,5 , the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) has suggested that coaches should present a solid background of knowledge and skills to successfully perform their function.In addition, it recommends that the activity of coaches should be supported by three major knowledge bases, namely, Professional, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal knowledge.Complementarily, functional competences are defined for the professional performance of sports coaches such as: Defining Vision and Strategy; Organizing the Environment; Building Relationships; Conducting Practices; Reading and Responding to the "Field" of Action; Learning and Reflecting 6 .
Traditionally, knowledge and skills related to the professional aspects of coaches' performance have occupied significant space in the investigative agenda on the subject [7][8][9][10] .In spite of the low presence of instruments for assessing coaches' performance 11 , among the instruments available in specialized literature to investigate the knowledge and/or competences of sports coaches 10,12,13 , there seems to be an overlapping of aspects related to the dimension of professional knowledge to the detriment of dimensions of interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge, as well as competences associated with such knowledge.
In the specialized literature, empirical studies conducted in international and national contexts using questionnaires, despite being sources of valuable information, present fragmented information.Some of these information are in the verification of different areas of knowledge and competence of basketball coaches in Portugal 14 , professional knowledge of tennis coaches 15 , competence of handball coaches 10 , competence of soccer coaches 12 , professional and interpersonal skills of coaches of various sports modalities 16 , functional competences of various collective and individual sport modalities 13 , as well as analysis of professional experiences and expertise level 17,18 .
The construction of instruments that demonstrate the different dimensions of knowledge/skills of sports coaching becomes necessary to reveal characteristics or aspects about the reality of coaches' practice.In this process, the validation of an instrument is a first step to better understand the gaps still existing in this area, in particular related to the assessment of interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge, as well as learning and reflection skills.In addition, content validity 19,20 has been a preponderant aspect in sports literature 21,22 for the improvement of academic knowledge.
Considering the current demands for the training and performance of coaches, in view of the perspectives on the knowledge base and competences recognized by ICCE 6 , the aim of the present study was to establish the content validity for a questionnaire about the knowledge and functional competences of sports coaches.From its validation, the knowledge and skills of coaches were analyzed according to the value/score assigned to the importance and domain perceived in each item of the questionnaire.

Participants
Five specialists (n = 5) from public higher education institutions from different regions of Brazil participated in the study.For the selection of specialists, the inclusion criteria adopted were having a doctorate degree for at least 10 years, academic experience with the theme and periodicity of publications in national and international journals of impact in the area 23 .

Ethical Procedures
The study was approved by the Ethics Research Committee of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (protocol No. 169,330).In addition, participants signed the Free and Informed Consent Form (ICF).

Process of Instrument Construction
The coaches' knowledge and competence questionnaire (CKCQ ) was elaborated from a two-dimensional structure, including questions about the importance and the perceived mastery of coaches' knowledge (n = 20) and the functional competencies of coaches (n = 18).The distribution of the number of questions related to professional (n = 10), interpersonal (n = 5) and intrapersonal (n = 5) knowledge of sports coaches, as well as the content of each item of the questionnaire is justified based on the conceptual model " Coaches Knowledge "elaborated by Côté and Gilbert 3 and Gilbert and Côté 24 and in the frameworks (version 1.1 and 1.2) of the International Council for Coaching Excellence 6,25 .
Professional knowledge includes a greater number of questions due to the amount of professional aspects involved in the practice of sports coaches.In this way, professional knowledge is related to the specific knowledge that guides the teaching-learning process of athletes and practitioners, such as technical-tactical knowledge of sports, physical preparation, training methodologies, implementation and evaluation of programs.Interpersonal knowledge is related to the social interactions of coaches in their practice environment, which involve communication and leadership with their athletes and work in conjunction with the technical committee and other actors involved in the sports context.Intrapersonal knowledge refers to the coaches' understanding of themselves and their capacity for self-formation, introspection and reflection, as well as the development of their work philosophy 8 .
Questions about the functional competences of sports coaches were subdivided into: set vision and strategy (n = 3), shape the environment (n = 3), build relationships (n = 3), conduct practices (n=3), read and react to the "field" (n = 3), and learn and reflect (n = 3) 6,8 .These competencies refer to the adaptation of approaches to guide the development of athletes in the social and organizational contexts 6 .The use of these two dimensions within the same questionnaire is based on the premise that the work capacity of coaches involves the development of specific competences, supported by a set of knowledge and their individual characteristics.

Validation Process
The validation procedures of the CKCQ content followed guidelines of Cassepp-Borges, Balbinotti and Teodoro 20 .Specialists assigned a score on a five-point Likert scale (1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = average, 4 = high, 5 = very high) to classify each of the following criteria: language clarity (language used in items), practical pertinence (considers whether each item was elaborated in order to evaluate the concept of interest of a certain population) and theoretical relevance (relevance between items and theory).
In the validation process, specialists were also able to make additional comments about each item of the questionnaire analyzed.Upon receipt of instrument validation forms by all specialists, data were tabulated in a Microsoft Office Excel 2013 spreadsheet for further analysis.

Data analysis
Data analyses were performed based on the calculation of the content validity coefficient (CVC) 19 .Calculations are presented as follows: 1) Based on the scores attributed by specialists, the mean score of each item (Mx) was calculated: Where Σxi represents the sum of the specialist's scores and J represents the number of specialists who evaluated the item.
2) Based on the mean score, the CVC was calculated for each item (CVCi): Where Vmax represents the maximum value that the item could receive.
3) The error (Pei) was also calculated to discount possible biases of specialists for each item: 4) Thus, the final CVC of each item (CVCc) was calculated as follows: CVC c = CVC i -Pe i 5) For the calculation of the total CVC of the questionnaire (CVCt), for each of the criteria (language clarity and practical pertinence), we used: Where Mcvci represents the mean of the content validity coefficients of the questionnaire items and Mpei the mean of the questionnaire items errors.
The cutoff point adopted for language clarity, practical pertinence and theoretical relevance was CVC c ≥0.81 for each item and CVC t ≥0.81 for the complete instrument, levels considered almost perfect 19 .

RESULTS
The results obtained in the CVC calculation for language clarity are presented in table 1.The instrument presented an approximate CVC t of 0.92, above the established cutoff point.Of the 38 proposed items, three (6, 9 and 25) presented CVCc below the cutoff point established for language clarity.Other items, although not presenting CVCc of language clarity below the established cutoff point, received suggestions for possible changes.Thus, the items were re-adapted, following specialists' suggestions, later, they were resubmitted for re-evaluation.After the second evaluation, all items were considered appropriate and included in table 1.
Regarding practical pertinence, the instrument presented an approximate CVC of 0.99, considered above the established cutoff point (table 2).All items of the instrument obtained CVCc above the cutoff point, considered almost perfect and, therefore, items were kept for the initial construction of the instrument.
For theoretical relevance, the instrument presented approximate CVCt of 0.98.All items of the instrument obtained CVCc above the cutoff point, considered almost perfect, therefore, items were kept for the initial construction of the instrument.
From the initial content validation process, the initial version of the CKCQ was elaborated contemplating 38 questions about the knowledge and functional competences of sports coaches (Box 1).

DISCUSSION
In order to validate the Coaches' Knowledge and Competence Questionnaire (CKCQ ), the study focused on its content validation.The validation of questionnaires with the purpose of investigating the competences of sports coaches has already proved to be of great importance for a better understanding of this subject 12,13 ; however, there is still lack of a concise approach to knowledge.The emergence of questionnaires addressing this theme reinforces the need for studies in this area and corroborates the construction of the present questionnaire 10 .Despite the existence of these questionnaires, this instrument appears as an alternative aligned with the broader understanding of the actions of sports coaches 6 .
In general, the results found in the study for language clarity (0.92), practical pertinence (0.99) and theoretical relevance (0.98) of the instrument CVC t indicate that the values can be considered almost perfect 19,20,23,26 .The study by Costa et al. 21, involving the content validation for tactical knowledge in volleyball, obtained CVC results for language clarity of 0.92, practical pertinence of 0.96 and theoretical relevance of 0.96.Similarly, in the validation process of the tactical knowledge test for basketball by Morales et al. 27 , CVC values of 0.94 for language clarity and 0.91 for practical pertinence were obtained.The results obtained in both studies corroborate the CVC found in the present study.
The CVC values found by Greco et al. 28 , in study assessing the content validation of a tactical knowledge test of sports orientation in basketball, handball and indoor soccer modalities, were 0.80-0.88for language clarity, 0.87-0.94for practical pertinence and 0.94-0.98 for theoretical relevance.In the study by Saldanha et al. 29 , the CVC values for language clarity (0.83) Continue… and practical pertinence (0.88) were obtained for the content validation in the translation of the Youth Sport Values Inventory 2 .Although these values are considered almost perfect, the present study showed relatively higher values.In another study of translation and validation for the Brazilian reality of the Multidimensional Scale of Perfectionism in Sport-2, Nascimento Júnior et al. 30 obtained values for language clarity and practical pertinence above 0.81, which indicates appropriate language clarity and relevance practice for the Brazilian context.In addition, Vieira et al. 22 performed the validation of the coach-athlete relationship questionnaire, obtaining CVC values above 0.8, showing satisfactory values for its construction and use.

CONCLUSION
From the validation process of the Coaches' Knowledge and Competence Questionnaire (CKCQ ), it could be concluded that the initial version of the instrument meets the language clarity, practical pertinence and theoretical relevance criteria, presenting almost perfect CVC t levels.The study continuity with future analyses for its validation process is emphasized, considered the target population of the questionnaire (sports coaches).The application of the instrument will result in the possibility of performing other analyses (exploratory and confirmatory factorial analysis) in order to verify the need for modifications and grouping of indicators in each dimension of the CKCQ.It is expected that from the factorial analysis (multi) dimensionality of the instrument will be confirmed by grouping the items in relation to the categories of knowledge and competences provided in the theoretical reference used, even if it is necessary to reduce certain items in order to better structure it, as well as to reach answers that meet the objectives proposed by this questionnaire.
The questionnaire presents itself as an important instrument that assists in a more in-depth understanding of the role of sports coaches of different levels of training and contexts of action, allowing the identification of knowledge and competences that involve their practice with a view to improving their professional performance.In addition, the questionnaire also shows itself as a new tool for the academic environment, to advance discussions about sports coaching and, specifically, to contribute to the development of the production of scientific knowledge inherent in the area of professional training and performance.

Table 1 .
Results of the CVC calculation for language clarity.

Table 2 .
Results of the CVC calculation for practical pertinence.

Table 3 .
Results of the CVC calculation for theoretical relevance.