Abstract
Many of the Special Olympics (SO) district organizations are struggling to secure human resources to support their sports programs. This study aims to explore factors related to the activities of SO volunteer coaches through semi-structured personal interviews. A qualitative study was conducted on thirteen volunteers (seven volunteer coaches and six volunteers) who participated in either an SO table tennis or basketball program in Japan. Content analysis was performed by the KJ method (Kawakita, 1970) . The “pros/facilitators” and “cons/barriers” to being an SO volunteer coach were determined by two members (one undergraduate student and one university lecturer) who specialized in psychology and had experienced the SO program as volunteer coaches. Consequently, fifty-two pros/facilitators and fifty-eight cons/barriers toward being an SO volunteer coach were selected. Through the KJ method, twelve factors were categorized as pros/facilitators and thirteen as cons/barriers. The results of this study are expected to be utilized as basic data to improve SO programs involving volunteer coaches.
