Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and personal well-being in European youth soccer players: Invariance of physical activity, global self-esteem and vitality across five countries

In this study, findings concerned with the association of self-reported global self-esteem, vitality and athletes' moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in young soccer players and the generalisability of these associations across different European populations are presented. After listwise exclusion of missing cases and the elimination of cases reporting less than a week of intensive physical activity, the sample of this analysis included 6796 athletes from France (N = 974), Greece (N = 1416), Norway (N = 1051), Spain (N = 2175) and England (N = 1180). Results from multi-sample structural equation modelling analyses provided evidence of invariance across countries for factor loadin…