Team sport in organisations: the development of a scale

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop an organisational team sport scale (OTSS). A series of projects was undertaken before the development of this organisational team sport scale. The initial phase, which consisted of a qualitative study, was done to get an in-depth understanding of how employees perceive organisational team sport interventions in their organisations through focus group interviews and individual interviews (n = 72) and through the literature review. In phase 2, information obtained from phase 1 was used to develop a scale which consisted of 53 items. In phase 3, a total of 209 respondents completed the scale. The number of items was reduced to 52 through principal component analyses and a five-factor structure was suggested. The final version of the OTSS contains 52 items that assess coping skills or achieve goals, relationships among participants, physical activity and health, benefits of sport for the organisation and work/life balance. Specific issues with regard to the five-factor structure are discussed and suggestions for future research are made. The findings of this study will contribute valuable new knowledge to the literature on the development of the OTSS. Keywords: benefits of sport, relationships, organisational team sport, physical activities, scale, work or life balance.