Designing the Model of Male Professional Athlete's Job Satisfaction in Iranian Team Sports

The purpose of present study was to design the model of male professional athlete's job satisfaction in Iranian team sports. The research method was descriptive. The population was 776 male athletes who participated in four team sports of Iranian premier league. The 360 professional athletes responded the structured questionnaire. A five-point Likert scale questionnaire with 66 items was constructed through literature review and exploratory interview with 23 athletes. The 17 sport management specialists as well as other experts confirmed the face validity of questionnaire. The reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha (α=0.98). The data was analyzed using Friedman and structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS22 at the significance of P≤0.05. The results showed that based on the mean ranks, job satisfaction outcomes (3.48), processes (3.47) and antecedents (3.40) were prioritized respectively. The confirmatory factor analysis revealed that all the items were significant at the level of P≤0.05. According to the structural equation modeling, the factors of organization (0.89) and group (0.87) were effective in the processes. Furthermore, the factors of group (0.91) and environment (0.92) were effective in the outcomes. At the second level of structural model, the processes with 0.55 impact factor had more impact on athlete's job satisfaction. The results of the indirect effects of model showed that the antecedents with effect size of 0.91 influenced the athlete's job satisfaction. In addition, the antecedents with effect size of 0.99 affected the processes. Moreover, the processes with effect size of 0.93 influenced the outcomes. Thus, club processes are very important in athlete's job satisfaction