Obstacles Facing the Iranian Basketball Academy

This study, which is a strategic study with a mixed research approach aimed to identify obstacles facing the academies of Iranian Basketball Federation. The population comprises board of directors and committees responsible for Education and Talent Spotting Association, academy administrators, physical education instructors, qualified experts, professors, coaches, referees and heads of delegations who were asked via interviews and questionnaire (exploratory manner) to state internal and external obstacles facing basketball academies in following 8 components in order of importance utilizing the Delphi method management and planning, training, human resources, financial resources, talent spotting, scientific and research and information technology, venues and infrastructures. Items were identified in 34 external and 49 internal factors. For weighting and prioritizing of items, the questionnaire was completed by 27 subjects employing AHP method based on pairwise comparisons. SPSS software version18 was utilized for descriptive statistics while AHP method in Expert Choice software was utilized for inferential statistics. At the end, a total of 11 executive strategies were proposed for removing the obstacles.