Research Article - (2012) Volume 2, Issue 5
1Department of Physical Education and sport science, Najaf abad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Esfahan, Iran
2Department of Physical Education and sport science, Naeein Branch, Islamic Azad University, Esfahan, Iran
The purpose of this study was to analyse volunteers’ attitude in international sport events. Statistical sample of this research included 300 members of a volunteer group in Esfahan. To collect the data of the study, a questionnaire with reliability of α=0/93 was constructed by the researcher. The data of the study was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics and the statistical tests including t test and ANOVA were used. The results showed that there is a significant difference between profit- oriented attitude, emotional and normative attitudes among the youth taking part in sport. There is also a significant relationship between attitudinal factors and personal characteristics of the participants and also between normative attitude and academic major. Students of humanistic sciences with regard to normative attitude are more willing to volunteer in sport events. According to the findings of the study, careful analysis and recognition of people’s attitude toward volunteering facilitates the process of attracting and maintaining them in future.
Volunteer, Attitude, Sport Events
Successful event management necessitates the effective management of personnel. This is achieved through the implementation of appropriate human resource strategies [11,6]. Event managers and sport marketers should focus on providing a gratifying experience for attendees because this positive encounter will generally lead to corporatesponsor support by participants through purchasing habits and revisiting the event. [25] The degree of intra team communication has been linked to team development, decision making, goal setting, cooperation, leadership, and conflict resolution. The quality of communication in a team setting has been shown to be central to the concept of group cohesion and participant satisfaction. The universe is shape through human’s point of view. It is human’s attitude, which gives facts their true color. The only difference between success and failure is attitude. Such an important category that determines our success or failure in life undoubtedly requires management. As a manager or leader of an organization, we cannot wish success unless we pay attention to staff’s attitudes and thoughts whether you are the leader of a family, and leader of a sport team, a coach, or a supervisor of volunteer. People’s attitude affects their relationship, changes their attitude towards failure and unhappiness, and shows them the way of prosperity and happiness. Human attitude can cause his promotion or progression [16].
Today, volunteers as one of the main three groups of human resources (staff, volunteers and client or customer) could find a special place for themselves in the structure of private and governmental organization especially in sport organizations(Chelladurai,2005). Sport development through volunteer’s activities is one of the Iran’s features in the past and today as an effective reality it has created appropriate opportunities for men and women to participate in sport[19].
The important sport events are in progress all over the world annually. What attracts public’s attention besides all attractions of an event is the volunteer’s presence with no expectations that play an important role in success of sport competitions (Daly, 1991; Williams, 1950). Since no match is independent from its environment, the environment is considering as a part of competition management system. The effects of environment on events and the similar effects of events on different aspects of society (economy, culture, politics, and society) and public environment are noticeable [3].
In most competitions and sport events, voluntary activities are necessary. We can define volunteers as those who demand very low rewards in terms of salary. However, most of volunteers of sport organization require receiving inner rewards [18]. Volunteering is a mutual process between the individuals and the organisms such that both of them get profits [10]. Ironmonger [13] claims that volunteering is to promote social values and economy level. Oesterle, Kirkpatrick & Mortimer [20] see volunteering as one of the greatest events to develop society and civilization, because it develops responsibility and respectability of urban principles in society. Also volunteering can facilitate maturity process of the teenagers. As Marta & Posse [15] concluded that in volunteering, we face with different social positions and different people leading to rich experiences in the context that might be useful in their future. On the other hand volunteering gives them a sense of commitment and societal belonging.
Different groups of people of western societies play a role in this movement that besides social profits it brings economic profits to their societies. Based on this statistics presented in 2006 by Cukelly and et al, more than 1 million of Australians and 26% of volunteers population, 5.4 millions of England’s population(11% ) and 5.26% of volunteer’s population are in Canada more than 1 million of population are 18% of volunteer population of these countries that render voluntary services in sport organizations.
Harvery, levesque & Donnelly [12] did study about examines the relationship between social capital, as a resource generated from social networks, and sport volunteerism. The authors employed a survey in two Canadian communities to explore the relationship between sport volunteerism and social capital. Measures of respondents’ social capital were based on what the authors call a position generator (which measures individuals’ access to people with different social statuses) and a resources generator (which measures the resources respondents have access to through social networks). The results indicate a strong relationship between volunteerism in sport and social capital. Controlling for gender, age, and language resulted in a strong relationship between sport volunteerism and social capital. The direction of the relationship, however, was not evident.
According to NSGVP1 statistics in 2000, about 1.17 millions of Canada’s population was volunteers in sport (Doherty, 2005). To point to the importance of volunteering, the greatest sport event- Olympic Games, which are successfully performing due to the contributions of voluntary companies, and organizations can be mentioning. The main part of Olympic Games and their successful holding is due to the role of volunteers’ extraordinary energy and effort. Based on Atlanta Olympics statistic, there were 60500 volunteers and 7000 volunteers in Sidney. The number of volunteers in Athens Olympic in comparison to the last Olympics was higher and about 65000 volunteers took part in it [21].The Beijing 2008 Olympics’ volunteers were 500000 that were dividing into three main groups: urban volunteers play time volunteers, and social volunteers. Gung Jo the director of voluntary section of Gung Jo Asian games committee said: there are 900000 people as volunteers help the holding of Asian games. Sport administrations of universities are one of the organizations to use volunteers in the sport parts of countries, for example, 36000 students of Beijing were involved in organizing sport events and more than 30000 Korean students organized Digo universal sport events. They believed that not only it helps them to develop but also this voluntary presence organized Digo University. In addition, it is a way to promote the sport of their countries because taking part in such programs cause the increasing of self-confidence and social interaction skills [10]. In Iran, the volunteers play their roles in two different ways, professional roles (it requires training and sport knowledge), and non-professional roles [1].
Attitudes are a brief and short summary of attitudinal topics whose domains are much unlimited and their continuum is from objects, people to deeds, events, and beliefs. How attitudes are forming and how the change is considering as most favored areas of interest. Attitudes both theoretically and practically attract the attractions of most scientists in modern societies as they are in close relation with behaviors. Those psychologists are studying attitude in sport are interested in studying the effects of attitudes on behavior and the possibility of changing it. Experts in sport and physical education pay a special attention to this topic, too. Because they want to create a positive attitude in people and encourage them to take part in organizing competition, maintaining the effort and achieving more success [14].Smith, Handley & Aldridge [23] claim that obtaining attitude is at the service of three important aims of psychology or it has three main functions including adaptive, practical, and self-defense. Adaptive function of attitude includes profits that special attitudes have for us and help us to achieve our goals.
Different attitudes and various motivations have been presented. In this regard, Solberg [24] in his study on volunteers concluded that people become volunteers because of leadership and benevolence. Wang [26] in his study on 935 volunteers in Sidney identify five incentives including humanistic values, personal growth, social relationship, adaptation, and social interactions. Also Morris & Amy [18] in a research done on the relationship between volunteer’s age and incentive factors in 2003, they investigated seven factors (job, making friends, social, value, protection, profit and understanding). In addition, it was determined that with aging job and life understanding decrease and social factors increased. Dorsch, Reamer, Sleuth, paskenvich & Chelladuari, [4] investigated seven factors in their studies on volunteers of organization that they identified helping society, helping others, social interaction, recognition, cultural privileges fun, job development and duty as incentives. Solbery [24] also in his study on volunteers of world games hockey concluded that most of them enjoy volunteering and they seek profits from volunteering. Afruze & Moharamzade [2] in their study on investigating motivational factors of volunteering in sport analyzed the presence of volunteers in three areas profit-oriented, normative, and emotional and its relation with age education. The results showed emotional factor is higher than the other two factors and they observed a meaningful relationship between education and normative motivator. In a study conducted by Mook, Handy & Quarter [17] on 666 non-profitable sectors and voluntary in Canada, they found out that the attitude of executives has an important role in employment and volunteers in organizations. Because of growing development of activities and sport programs in recent year, voluntary movement in sport organizations has quickly increased. There are different factor motivating the people to working voluntarily in sport organization. However, we can clearly refer to is recognizing people’s attitude to volunteering and the importance of planning and providing opportunities for volunteers to participate in groups and holding committees in sport management. Since the volunteer’s work and activity are completely voluntarily, it is possible for someone to leave the work willingly while the employees are forcing to continue their job to satisfy their needs and meet the ends. These differences make sport organizations consider different kinds of occasions and various attitudes of volunteers work that has one very important feature which is they work voluntarily and if they feel unhappy they might give up their activities.
The diverse results show that there is no clear answer to this question that what stimulates individuals to be volunteers. Some people attributed this diversity to the weakness in volunteer’s attitudes methodology. The one hand we should have executive personnel in competition at all levels so the researchers are looking for a solution by which they can identify and analyze volunteer’s attitude in sport, which in turn results in strategies for attracting and developing this potentiality.
This research is descriptive-analytic that was done in a field study. In descriptive research, the researchers want to identify volunteers’ attitude and determine the key factors without any involvement and prejudgment and finally by doing content analysis, they try to attract, maintain, and increase volunteer’s attitude.
Research sample consisted of 300 members of Esfahan volunteer’s movement that were willing to help the holding of the second solidarity games of Islamic countries. So 300 questionnaires were distributed among participants and only 235 of them (78.3%) were returned and received by the researchers.
The instruments of this research are a researcher made questionnaire. The questionnaire includes two parts, personal information, and attitude scale. The personal information questionnaire is use for determining (age, gender, marital status, education level, sport, and academic major). Attitude part includes 35 questions in seven scales that were in three parts to identify profit-oriented (1-16), emotional (17-29) and normative (30-35) attitudes 10 experts in sport management expressed their ideas on the face and content validity of the questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was determined in a pilot study using Alpha Chronbach and enjoyed the reliability index of (0.93).
The data of the study were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics included means and standard deviation. In addition, to assess and analyze the volunteer’s attitude in sport events “t” tests and variance analysis were use. To analyze the data SPSS software, ver.18 was use for data analysis.
The participants of this study were 235 volunteers from Esfahan consisting of 152 women and 75 men. Among the participants, there were 47 married and 180 singles with the highest age mean of 20/01-+110/90 within the range of 18-25. Also most of the participants, that is, 127 with the mean of 112/05-+20/09 had B.A degree, 39 of them had B.A in physical education, and the participants were most interested in individual sports with the mean of 111/91- +18/48 and were 106. Also refer to results the average of normative attitude is 3.78, the average of profit- oriented is 2.82 and finally the average of emotional attitude is 3.26.
The results of table 1 show significant differences between factors of emotional, profit - oriented and normative attitude (p=0.05).
Table 1: Differences between factors of emotional, profit - oriented and normative attitude
To investigate the differences between attitudinal factors and age, education level, academic major and sport field of participants ANOVA was use. As we can observe in table 2, there is a significant difference between normative attitude and academic major.
Table 2 shows the results of the follow-up test on normative attitude with academic major, for this purpose Toki follow-up test was use. The results showed that there is a significant difference between humanistic sciences fields and physical education and other fields. (Art, medical and technical). It means that humanistic sciences were more willing to volunteer in sport in terms of normative attitude component (p=0.05).
Table 2: Differences between the attitudes of participants and age, education, academic major and sports, subjects
Table 3: Results of Toky test for paired means of volunteer's attitude attitudes with academic major
Table 4: Difference between the attitudes of volunteer subjects with sex and marital status
Results of Toky test show that significant differences between physical education with human science in volunteer's attitude (p=0.05).
To investigate the differences between attitudinal factors and gender and participant’s marital status, “t” test was use. As we can see in table 5 there is not any significant difference between emotional, profit-oriented, and normative attitude and marital status, but there is a significant difference between emotional attitude and gender(p=0.05).
Recognizing the needs, individual’s attitudes, and motivational factors in volunteering in sport-by-sport event’s organizers is necessary to adapt that factor with sport programs necessities and put volunteers in a useful situation. The results of this study show that there is a significant difference between emotional, profit-oriented and normative attitudes indicating the importance of the three attitudes and referring to the fact that people don’t volunteer only for fun, entertainment, financial resource and getting rewards, but they look for an opportunity to be useful, socialized and to get social status and most important of all to be at the service of promoting their national sport in all dimensions. The obtained means of the three attitudes are a clear indicator of this issue. The results contradicted Afruze & moharamzade [2], Salonberg [24] in giving more importance to emotional attitude because most of the volunteers enjoy volunteering and mostly they are following its profits. This can be due to developing sport culture in society since profit-oriented and normative attitude can be effective factors to keep volunteers in sport and motivate them to continue their cooperation in organizing sport events. Therefore considering these factors can be useful in keeping and attracting volunteers. These results were in line with the finding of the studies conducted by Dunward & Ralestone [9], Wang [26], showing that volunteering is to promote social values, community development and civilization, sense of commitment, and society belonging and facilitating maturity process of the youth. In volunteering, people face with different social situations and they get rich experiences useful for their future. In addition, sport managers assess job expectations of the volunteers by discovering their attitudes. Such a process will help the managers take effective measures in employing and maintaining the volunteers in their organizations.
The findings of the study show that there is no significant difference between the three types of attitude, i.e., emotional, profit-oriented, and normative and age and education level. Therefore, the presence of factors related to age, and education level in attitude is not confirm contradicting the finding of Moris, et al[18] who found out that as age increases, job related and social factor increase too. However, these findings were in line with Afrouze & moharamzade [2] that showed that there is a significant relationship between education level and normative attitude. The findings show a significant difference between the normative attitude and academic major of the participants, that is, participants of humanistic sciences were more willing to volunteer in terms of normative attitude. The finding can be justified on the ground that participants of humanistic sciences are more extrovert that makes them more willing to volunteer in affaire such as working with the others, helping the others, educating and understanding the society, and promoting the society well fare. Organizations that are more aware of the volunteers’ attitude are more successful in attracting them. The findings of the present study support the fact that the more the organizations invest in recognizing the attitude of the volunteers, the more the process of attracting and maintaining the volunteers in future will be facilitated. Organizations which have adequate information about their volunteers’ attitudes are more successful in terms of absorbing volunteers. Based on the current study, the more time the sport organizations allocate to know about the individuals’ attitudes toward volunteering, the easier they absorb and maintain volunteers in the future. Since volunteers could be crucial sources of energy and new ideas, their motivation could help the organization in absorbing more volunteers. However, most of the inspirational factors which are effective on individuals’ making decisions in order to be volunteers or not, are personal and organizations do not have an effective role in them. It is axiomatic that committed and inspired volunteers can make stronger and wider the relationship between the organization and society, and even become great representatives of the organizations. It should be noticed that by bringing about management procedures and instructions, one could increase inspiration for volunteering and simplify the process of individuals’ tendency toward volunteering, since volunteers’ effort could increase the organizational capacity.
