Identifying Factors Affecting the Development of Sport Cooperatives in Iran

Sports cooperatives have been considered as an important approach in the process of job creation and their place in the development of job opportunities. Promotion of sports cooperatives is considered as innovation deployment and creation of a new profession in one of the sports subset. Therefore, this study aimed to identify those factors affecting the development of sports cooperatives in Iran. This research was practical based on the aim and the analytical- descriptive method was used in this research. Statistical population of this research included experts of the research offices of cooperative, labor and social affairs general departments of Iran. Statistical sample equaled the population (N=61). A researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 33 measures was designed by a 5-point Likert scale to collect the data. The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by sport management professors and some senior experts of cooperative, labor and social affairs general departments. In order to determine the reliability of the questionnaire, Chronbach’s alpha was used (α=0.91). Kolmogorov-Smirnov was used to determine the normality of data and oneway ANOVA to compare factors at α 0.05 by SPSS18 statistical software. The results showed that all of the factors were important in developing sports cooperatives and there was no significant deference among these factors (p=0.123). It can be concluded that the development of sports cooperatives need the following supportive measures including providing special facilities for superior sports cooperatives, eliminating structural barriers such as facilitating bank facilities and the legal process to create cooperative firms and creating a relationship between educational systems and work environment.