A network psychometric analysis to advance the understanding of children’s physical literacy

Background: Despite growing interest in children’s physical literacy (PL), limited research has examined the relative importance of its constituent elements from children’s own perspectives using network-based methods. This study employed network psychometrics to identify the key elements (i.e., nodes with high centrality in the PL elements network) of PL based on children’s self-perception. Methods: A total of 1,520 Chinese children (752 girls, 49.5%; 768 boys, 50.5%), aged 7 to 12 years (M = 9.6 ± 1.7) completed a PL self-report (the Physical Literacy in Children Questionnaire). Regularized psychological networks were constructed to estimate the interactions between PL elements. Centrality was assessed using the expected influence (EI) index to identify potentially the most influential elements in the PL network. Network comparison test evaluates whether network structure, global strength, and centrality indices differed by sex and age groups (7–9 years and 10–12 years). Results: The elements with high EI values in the PL networks were engagement and enjoyment (psychological domain, EI = 1.64–2.22), collaboration (social domain, EI = 1.34–1.64), self-regulation-physical (psychological domain, EI = 1.12–1.63), and speed (physical domain, EI = 1.10–1.17). The PL network structure and global strength were invariant, though the specific elements with higher EI values differed slightly by sex and age groups. Conclusion: This study identified engagement and enjoyment, collaboration, self-regulation-physical, and speed as key elements of children’s PL. These findings support a child-centered, systems view of PL and highlight elements that merit further investigation in longitudinal or experimental research. Our findings empirically support the inclusion of social elements and children’s voices into PL assessment and promotion.