The Sport Motivation Scale (SMS) is a tool that helps measure different types of motivation in sports (Taylor, 2019). The SMS helps understand why people do sports and how much they enjoy it. The original SMS had 28 questions (Pelletier et al., 1995), but it was later revised and shortened to 24 (Mallett et al., 2007) and then 18 questions (Pelletier et al., 2013). The different versions of the SMS measure different types of motivation, like whether people are motivated because they enjoy the activity or because they are motivated by others. Given that the scale has undergone a variety of changes since 1995, researchers affiliated with it recommend choosing which version to use based off of the individual research questions (Taylor, 2019).
Mallett, C. J., Kawabata, M., Newcombe, P., Otero-Ferero, A., & Jackson, S. A. (2007). Sports Motivation Scale-6 (SMS- 6): A revised six-factor sport motivation scale. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 8, 600614.
Pelletier, L. G., Fortier, M. S., Vallerand, R. J., Tuson, K. M., Brie`re, N. M., & Blais, M. R. (1995). Toward a new mea- sure of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amoti- vation in sports: The Sport Motivation Scale (SMS). Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 17, 3553.
Pelletier, L. G., Rocchi, M. A., Vallerand, R. J., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2013). Validation of the revised sport motivation scale (SMS-II). Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 14, 329341.
Taylor, I. M. (2019). In D. Hackfort, R. J. Schinke, & B. Strauss (Eds.), Dictionary of sport psychology: Sport, exercise, and performing arts. Academic Press.
