The motivation for exercise, sports, or participating in physical activities has been the focus of research for many years. The aim of this paper was to validate the Croatian translation of the Situational Motivation Scale in the sports context and to check its metric characteristics. A total of 449 (55% women) active and recreational athletes, aged 15 to 64 (M = 27.60, SD = 10.50), participated in the study. Participants completed The Exercise Motivation Questionnaire (Markland and Ingledew, 1997; Vlašić et al., 2002) and the Situational Motivation Scale (Guay et al., 2000), which, according to Self-determination theory, measures intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, external regulation and amotivation. The obtained results confirm the satisfactory construct and criterion validity of the Croatian version of the Situational Motivation Scale and measurement invariance for athletes of different genders. Given the importance of physical activity for health, it is necessary to understand the motives underlying exercise or training, so that we can encourage people to engage in and stay in sports, whether active or recreational.

self-determination theory, Situational Motivation Scale, exercise motivation