Attitudes and intention of greek students upon to participate as volunteers in paralympics games 2004

Introduction

A piece of the success of the Olympics and Paralympics Games belongs to each one of the volunteers. Volunteers are the people who make the Games happen, supporting every athlete, spectator, and visitor for the most amazing sporting events in the world. In 2004, will Greek students take part as volunteers in the Paralympics games? According to Ajzen (1988), in order to evaluate the relationship between attitude and behavior, what comes before every action, is the intention of the person to execute this specific action. The aim of the study was to record the attitudes and behaviors of Greek students as to possibility to participate as volunteers in Paralympics games in 2004.

Methods

The sample of the study included 705 students, 400 from five Greek Departments of Physical Education and Sport Science (176 men, 224women) (students A) and 305 from other Departments of Greek Universities (145 men, 160 women). The instrument that was used was the Planned Behavior Questionnaire (Ajzen & Madden, 1986; Ajzen, 1988) that was modified for the Greek language and culture by Theodorakis (1992; 1994).

Results

The results indicated that the questionnaire was an appropriate instrument for the study (Cronbach’s a: .84 - .89). Additionally, ANOVA analysis revealed that: a) attitude and information are the variables were the differentiation between gender was located, with the women having the higher scores, b) intention is the variable where the differentiation between the departments was located, with students in of Physical Education and Sport Sciences departments having the higher scores. On the contrary these students had lower scores in the variable ‘knowledge’.

Conclusion

The conclusion of the study was that, attitude strength, self-identity, knowledge and information have a positive effect on the attitudes and behaviors on students who want to participate as volunteer in Paralympics games in 2004.

References:

[1]. Ajzen, I. & Madden, T.J. (1986). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 453-7.
[2]. Theodorakis, Y. (1994). The Sport Psychologist, 8, 149-65.