Background/Purpose Volunteers play a significant role in major sport events such as the Olympics. Numerous research studies have been conducted to understand the motivation of volunteers in order to improve the effectiveness of volunteer management. The purpose of this study was to reexamine the underlying factor structure of the Special Event Volunteer Motivation Scale (SEVMS; Farrell, Johnston, & Twynam, 1998) in the Chinese context.
Method The researchers of this study translated the SEVMS into Chinese and a panel of bilingual experts in the English Department translated the items back to English. After some modifications in terms of face validity, the reliability (Chinese/English versions) of the Scale was tested with a pilot study. Then the Chinese SEVMS was distributed to 16 universities in four major cities in Asia.
Analysis/Results Participants of this study (Male=184, Female=143) were university students from Beijing (n=83), Hong Kong (n=81), Macau (n=87) and Taipei (n=79). Results of the exploratory factor analysis showed two variables loaded evenly but nonsignificant across all the factors and thus they were discarded. The factor loadings of the remaining 26 items were all above .30 (Stevens, 1998) and were distributed under six factors: Motivation, Tradition, Commitment, Acclamation, Socialization, and Betterment (Cronbach's alpha were .81, .71, .69, .69, .63 and .55, respectively).
Conclusions The results of the present study indicated more specific factors were necessary to explain the motivation of volunteers in major sport events. Although the Chinese version of the SEVMS showed adequate factor structure and reliability, further studies were needed to warrant its construct validity.
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