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

Carolina Lundqvist and Saga Johansson

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: 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

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0343533

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0343533

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