Determining the relationship of sport type(individual, group, contact and non contact sports) and leisure activities of female athletes in comparison with non-Athletes

The aim of this research was to understand the relationship between the type of sport and athletes’ and non athletes’ recreation. The type of sport in this research includes Individual contact, Individual non-contact, Group contact and group non-contact sports. The types of leisure activities included serious leisure, specialized play, and edgework and fantasy activities.
Subjects were 286 athletes and 315 none-athletes. A 25-item questionnaire distributed between subjects. Its validity had been approved by sport management and leisure experts. The reliability of questionnaire has been calculated 82% by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient test. Kolmogorov - Smirnov and Mann-Whitney U tests, Eta correlation coefficient in significant level p≤0.05 have been used. The results showed a significant relationship between the kind of sport and serious leisure. With analyzing the means of four groups, it was cleared that athletes in Individual non-contact, individual contact, Group contact and group non-contact were engaged in serious leisure respectively. Although no significant relationship was seen between the types of sport, specialized play, edge work and fantasy activities. The research results also showed that there is a significant difference between specialized play, edgework and fantasy activities in Guilan athletes and none- athletes, and in all occasions, athletes used these activities more than none- athletes. Also, no significant relationship was seen in athletes and none- athlete’s serious leisure.