A Comparative Study on the Levels of Motivational Needs between War Veteran Disabled Athletes and Non-Veteran Ones, based on ERG Theory

This study was undertaken as an attempt to compare the motivational needs of two groups of disabled athletes, i.e. war veterans and ordinary ones (non-veterans). The article tries to dig up proper and plausible answers for the following queries: Do the level of existence needs of war veteran disables athletes and other disabled athletes differ from one another? Are there any differences in the levels of relatedness needs between these two groups? Are there any differences in the levels of growth needs between these two groups? The population of the research was composed of two groups, i.e. war veteran disables athletes and non-veteran disabled athletes in Tehran, including a number of 800 individuals. The researchers used t-test to analyze the data with the aim of comparing the two independent samples. Alderfer ERG (existence, relatedness and growth) theory was adopted as the theoretical model of the research, which allows the researcher to investigate the needs in three levels. The findings of the study indicate that there are differences between the level of motivational needs of war veteran disables athletes and that of the non-veteran disabled ones. Moreover, the results revealed that average of grow needs outweighed other priorities among the war veteran disabled athletes, followed by communicational and existence needs, respectively. In contrast, the non-veteran disabled athletes deemed communicational needs as their foremost priority, followed by grow and existence needs, order-wise.