THE REASONS FOR AND THE BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATION OF THE VOLUNTEERS IN TURKISH SPORT FEDERATIONS: AN EVALUATION RELATE TO SERIOUS LEISURE THEORY

The aim of this study is to determine the participation reasons and the benefits of volunteering in sport federations in Turkey. The data is collected through the semi-structured interviews with the volunteers that have a task in the various managerial levels of the sport federations. The semi-structured forms are developed afterdocument analyses and consisted of 8 questions. Snowball sampling method is used to designate the working group and overall 22 interviews are done. Three researchers made content analyses separately on the interviews. The categories are determined after the analyses and the findings are presented descriptively. According to the findings,the reasons of participation to volunteering are 1- to develop carrier, 2- love of sport, 3- the need to be helpful, 4- the will to fill the leisure time and 5- to fulfill the social responsibility. The benefits of the volunteers are examined inthree dimensions. First, the individual benefits are consisted with the categories as, happiness and inner peace,experience and information, self-expression and creativity and helping others. Social benefits are assigned as making a circle of friends, social prestige, and social interactions. The organizational benefits are defined as the communication between the organizations, the contribution to the organization and the contribution to the system of sport. Consequently, the findings supported the Serious Leisure Theory and indicated that there are favorable relations between the participation reasons and the benefits of volunteering in sport federations