ACSI-28 vs. SportPersonalities SportDNA Assessment

These assessments are highly compatible and actually complement each other well when used together. The ACSI-28 provides a focused evaluation of seven specific coping skills that can be developed through training, while the SportDNA Blueprint offers a broader personality and motivational profile that reveals underlying traits and communication preferences. Many coaches find value in using the SportDNA Blueprint as a foundational assessment to understand athlete personality and then applying the ACSI-28 periodically to track the development of specific mental skills. This combined approach gives you both the stable personality insights and the measurable skill progression data. Using both tools creates a more complete picture of the athlete as both a person and a performer.

The choice depends primarily on your immediate goals and what you plan to do with the information. If your focus is on building team chemistry, improving communication, and understanding individual motivational needs, the SportDNA Blueprint is the better choice because it reveals personality differences and how athletes prefer to be coached. If your primary goal is to identify and develop specific mental skills like concentration, confidence management, or performance under pressure, the ACSI-28 is more appropriate because it measures trainable coping skills. For youth athletes and teams prioritizing culture and communication, the SportDNA Blueprint typically provides more immediately actionable insights. For competitive programs with established team dynamics that want to add structured mental skills training, the ACSI-28 offers clear benchmarks and progress tracking.

The SportDNA Blueprint is priced at $27 per individual athlete or coach, with team pricing options and subscription plans available for organizations and coaches working with multiple athletes. The ACSI-28 pricing varies depending on the provider and format, with costs typically ranging from $20 to $50 per assessment when purchased individually, though academic or bulk pricing may differ. When evaluating cost, consider what you receive with each assessment beyond just the numerical scores. The SportDNA Blueprint includes extensive interpretation guidance, practical application strategies, and communication coaching built into the report itself, while the ACSI-28 provides research-validated scores that may require additional resources or expertise to interpret and apply effectively. For teams and organizations, the subscription and team pricing options for the SportDNA Blueprint can provide significant value when assessing multiple athletes throughout a season.

The ACSI-28 has extensive academic validation with over three decades of peer-reviewed research supporting its reliability and validity across numerous sports and populations. It was developed through rigorous psychometric testing and has been used in hundreds of published studies examining the relationship between coping skills and athletic performance. The SportDNA Blueprint is built on established personality psychology frameworks, particularly the Big Five model and motivational theory, which have robust scientific foundations spanning decades of psychological research. While the ACSI-28 has more sport-specific validation studies published in academic journals, the personality constructs underlying the SportDNA Blueprint are among the most researched and validated in all of psychology. Both assessments rest on solid scientific ground, but they draw from different research traditions: the ACSI-28 from sport-specific applied research and the SportDNA Blueprint from broader personality and motivational science applied to the sport context.

The SportDNA Blueprint is specifically designed with team applications in mind and excels at revealing personality diversity, communication preferences, and motivational differences within a group. It helps coaches understand why certain athletes clash, how to structure effective partnerships, and how to communicate differently with various personality types on the roster. The ACSI-28, while valuable for teams, focuses on individual coping skills rather than interpersonal dynamics and does not directly address communication styles or personality compatibility. For building team culture, improving coach-athlete relationships, and managing the social dynamics of a team, the SportDNA Blueprint provides more directly applicable insights. However, the ACSI-28 can identify which team members may struggle with specific performance pressures, allowing coaches to provide targeted support or pair athletes with complementary coping strengths.

The two assessments have different retesting recommendations because they measure different constructs with different stability levels. The SportDNA Blueprint assesses relatively stable personality traits and core motivational patterns, so results typically remain consistent over time, and retaking it annually or when significant life changes occur is usually sufficient. The ACSI-28 measures coping skills that can be developed through training and may fluctuate with experience, confidence, and circumstances, making it appropriate to readminister every 3-6 months when actively working on mental skills development. Athletes going through major transitions such as moving to a new competitive level, recovering from injury, or experiencing significant life changes may benefit from retaking either assessment. For the ACSI-28, more frequent assessment allows coaches to track skill development and measure the effectiveness of mental training interventions.

The requirements differ significantly between these two tools. The ACSI-28 does not require formal certification to administer, but effectively interpreting the results and developing appropriate interventions is greatly enhanced by background in sport psychology or mental skills training. Many coaches use the ACSI-28 to identify areas for development and then work with a sport psychology consultant to design targeted interventions. The SportDNA Blueprint is designed to be accessible to coaches and athletes without specialized training, as the report itself includes extensive interpretation guidance and practical application strategies written in accessible language. However, deeper understanding of personality psychology and coaching applications can enhance the value you extract from either assessment. For organizations implementing either tool at scale, investing in professional development or consultation with a sport psychology expert can maximize the return on assessment and ensure ethical, effective use of the information.