Identification of Barriers to Research and Technology in Sports Sciences in Iran

Research, science production and technology are the most important elements of the development of countries.  The main purpose of the research is to determine if the model of barriers to research and technology in sports sciences is appropriate in terms of the goodness of fit indexes. The study employed a descriptive-correlational method, which is applied in terms of purpose and exploratory in nature.  To collect data, field survey method was used. The statistical population consisted of all faculty members in the field of physical education and sports sciences at Iran state universities in 2017 (n=1100). Based on the Morgan table, 320 individuals were selected using the simple random sampling method. Finally, 246 questionnaires were chosen to analyze. To collect information, a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 44 items across a five-point Likert scale was used. The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed based on Lawshe's table of critical values (CVR = 0.85); and reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed based on the Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α=0.82). To analyze data, exploratory and confirmatory analyses were performed using SPSS 20 and LISREL 8.5 software. The results showed that development or modification of seven factors including research and technology culture in the society (0.65), management and policymaking in the research system (0.53), research rules and regulations (0.60), the commercialization of research results (070), budgeting and research facilities (0.78), and the researchers' status (0.51) were identified as barriers to research and technology in physical education and sports sciences. In total, this model had a 65.966% predictive power on the basis of total aggregate variance percentage.   It was indicated that the model of barriers to research and technology in the field of sports sciences is appropriate in terms of the goodness of fit indexes. Obstacles and efforts to develop relevant strategies in this area could accelerate the process of developing research and technology in the field of sports sciences.