Purpose: This study extended Taiwan scholar Nien’s (2000) Flow State Scale. In accordance with the foundation of flow theory by Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1990), we developed appropriate flow state scale for Taiwanese high school athletes from qualitative analysis to quantization.
Method: There were four discreet steps. The first step was to interview twelve high school athletes using Grounded Theory. This study adopted the Flow State Scale proposed by Jackson and Marsh (1996) as a foundation and then combined the Chinese version items of Taiwan athletes to construct the main concepts and phrases as the dimensions and items of Flow State Scale. Continually, we developed scales by questionnaire survey. The survey procedure was divided into three stages. A total of 1639 valid responses from high school athletes, 388 from the first stage, 397 from the second stage and 854 from the third stage respectively. Then, the second step was item development, item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and internal consistency. The third step was to proceed to confirmatory factor analysis, convergent validity, average variance extracted amount, discriminant validity, composite reliability, and criterion related analysis. The fourth step was to examine measurement invariance.
Result: The results showed that the scale included five aspects and eighteen items; they are perceptional balance and sense of control, focused message and feedback, loss self-consciousness, the transformation of time, and autotelic experience. All indicators presented good reliability, validity, and measurement invariance.
Conclusion: The result showed that this scale is suitable for testing the flow state of high school athletes. This scale can be provided for realizing the athlete flow state responses of experiencing contest.