Modification of the Volunteer Functions Inventory for Youth Sport Volunteers

Purpose

Volunteers are a crucial component of the work force in the sport industry, particularly for youth sports. Understanding factors that cause, channel, and sustain sport volunteerism would provide support for sport organizations to recruit and retain volunteers. Numerous researchers have conducted studies to examine sport volunteer motivations by adopting measures that were developed in organizational contexts other than sport organizations. To a great extent, previous studies have failed to take into consideration specific and unique features of sport organizations or events. Lacking measurement relevance to the sport industry may reduce the internal validity and practical applications of these previous studies. Of various scales measuring volunteerism, the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI, Clary et al., 1998) is a general scale that was developed through comprehensive measurement procedures. The VFI consists of 30 items under six factors: Values, Understanding, Social, Career, Protect, and Enhancement. The scale has been widely adopted to study general issues of volunteerism. The purpose of this study was to modify the VFI to be specifically applicable to assess volunteer motivations in the setting of youth sports.

Methods

Testing of measurement properties was accomplished through two studies. In Study One, the modified VFI was administered to volunteers (N=515) in a nationwide youth soccer organization and in Study Two, the resolved scale was cross-validated through volunteers (N=262) in local youth sport leagues.

Analysis/Results

In Study One, data were randomly split into two-halves: one for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with principal-axis extraction and oblique rotation, and the other for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood estimation. In the EFA, six factors emerged, which were consistent with the dimensions of the VFI; however, 12 items were eliminated due to double loading or misspecification, resulting in 18 items retained. The CFA revealed that the data fit the 6-factor model well (e.g., Χ²/df=2.693; RMSEA=.057; CFI =.955). The factors also displayed good properties in convergent validity, discriminant validity, average variance extracted, and internal consistency. In Study Two, a CFA of the resolved scale displayed adequate fit indexes, along with other aspects of validity and reliability.

Conclusions

Overall, findings of these two studies indicated that the modified VFI for youth sports is a valid and reliable scale. This scale may be adopted to study various volunteer motivation issues associated with youth sport organizations and events.