Research on sport volunteering

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of the study is to review the current trends of Korean research on sport volunteering. Methods For the research purpose, 74 KCI-listed articles published were investigated. Results The main topics of 60 articles were sport volunteering and the sub-topic or factor of the other 14 articles was sport volunteering. These articles were classified based on the publishing year, type of journal, academic area, research method, research topic, research sample, volunteer characteristics and volunteer area. Research on sport volunteering has been continuously conducted but the number of related publications has been increased since 2009. Sport volunteer research articles have been published in various sport related journals. However, the majority of the research articles are in the research areas of sport management, sport pedagogy, adopted physical education, and sport policy. Regarding the research method, more than a half of the articles were the ones using quantitative research methods, but qualitative research methods were often used as well. The majority of the research were conducted on volunteers but the research conducted on the beneficiaries of volunteer services were few. Many of the volunteers researched were college students. Event volunteering and educational volunteering were common volunteering areas in the research articles. Conclusions Korean researchers should not only conduct more research on sport volunteering with various topics but also improve the quality of the research after conducting the in-depth review of theories and literature and the better understanding about Korean situation on sport volunteering.