Volunteers' motivation and sense of community in a sports event

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Beden Eğitimi ve Spor Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: ALPER YILDIZ

Danışman: MEHMET SETTAR KOÇAK

Özet:

Volunteers are indispensable for sports events. Success of the event is related with their well management and coordination. These can be understood within the theoretical framework of the sense of community theory. Aim of this research was investigating the perceived senses of community and motivations of volunteers, and examining correlations between sense of community and motivation of sports event volunteers. Four hundred seventy-seven volunteers who served for 36th Vodafone Istanbul Marathon participated the study. After checking validity and reliability, data were collected via Special Event Volunteer Motivation Scale (SEVMS) and Perceived Sense of Community Scale (PSCS). Instruments were applied via e-mail and paper forms in data collection process. Descriptive statistics and canonical correlation analysis was used in data analysis process. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted by AMOS 18 while other analyses were conducted by IBM SPSS 22 package program. Findings demonstrated that most of the sports event volunteers were male and university or college students. Volunteers were highly motivated to participate the event and their sense of community perception was in high level. In addition, there was a positive correlation between sense of community and motivation of volunteers in moderate level. Results demonstrated that sense of community among volunteers has an importance and event managers were recommended to provide socialization opportunities throughout event and in pre-event meeting processes. Innovative studies such as relation of volunteer motivation with different variables or qualitative studies that examine sense of community in sports or event settings were recommended for further studies.