Assessing toxic leadership in high-performance sports: Psychometric validation of a Swedish Version of the Toxic Leadership Scale for Sports (TLS-S)

This study evaluated the internal consistency and factorial validity of a sport-adjusted 15-item version of the Toxic Leadership Scale (TLS-S). The sample consisted of 189 Swedish elite team sport athletes (56 females, 132 males, 1 preferred not to disclose; mean age = 17.9 years, SD = 3.3) from 21 different teams (ice hockey n = 68; soccer n = 60; American football n = 26; basketball n = 15; handball n = 14; volleyball n = 3; other team sports not specified or multiple sports n = 3). Participants competed at different performance levels: sub-elite (n = 15), national junior elite (n = 105), international junior elite (n = 26), national senior elite (n = 30), international senior elite (n = 12), and other not specified (n = 1). Results showed adequate internal consistency (ωt > .70) for the total TLS-S score and all subscales except the authoritarian leadership subscale (ωt = .61). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated acceptable model fit for both a five-factor and a one-factor model. While the five-factor model (χ²(80)=135.87, p < .001; CFI = .98; RMSEA = .062 90% CI: .044-.080; SRMR = .044) was superior to the one-factor solution (difference test: χ²(10)=53.60, p < .001), intercorrelations across subscales were high (range: .73-.92). A bifactor model supported a unidimensional structure (explained common variance = .79; percentage of uncontaminated correlations = .86). The findings provide psychometric evidence for the TLS-S and support a unidimensional structure. This study constitutes an important initial step toward facilitating the quantitative assessment of toxic leadership within sport environments, with the TLS-S emerging as a promising instrument for this purpose.