Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the process of retirement from professional sport from perspective of sports administrator and retired athletes. This survey was descriptive that 42 administrators and 70 retired athletes from Guilan province took part in it. Data gathered through SCT questionnaire which it's content and face validity was confirmed by 15 experts and reliability was computed in a pilot study that included 20 retired athletes and 15 sports administrator (r=0.91). The data were analyzed by using repeated measure, Pearson correlation coefficient and Independent t test. The results showed that, the reasons for sport retirement included achievement of goals championship, sport injuries, financial problems and having problems with coaching staff. Also health-related and job-related problems were the most problems which retired athletes were confronted them. Results showed there were significant differences among problems of sport retirement from the perspective of sports administrator and retired athletes. Also, there were significant relationships between reasons and problems of retirement (p≤0.05). With offering programs such as economic and financial, educational, professional, Public health and nutrition consultant, etc., sport organizations can prepare athletes to face with retirement and its likely problems.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the factor analysis and internal consistency of
a Persian version of the Athletes’ Retirement Decision Inventory (P-ARDI).
Fernandez et al. (2006) developed this instrument based on the push, pull, antipush,
and anti-pull point of view. We required 243 Iranian elite competitive athletes
(mean age = 25.19 years; 81% male) to complete the questionnaire. The factor
structure of the P-ARDI was evaluated by explanatory and confirmatory factor
analysis. The internal consistency was determined by Cronbach’s alpha. According
to the results, four-factor solution principal component analysis accounted for
65.02% of the variance of the final 36-item version of the P-ARDI. The Cronbach’s
alpha coefficient for the aforementioned factors was found to be greater than 0.7.
In sum, the results suggest that the retirement decision process was found to be
much more complex and multidimensional.