The Effect of Social Ties on Commercialization Perception of Sports Science Research: The Mediating Role of Students' Research Capability

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of social ties on the commercialization perception of sports science research with the mediating role of students' research capability. This is based on purpose, is applicable and it is descriptive-correlation in terms of data collection method. The statistical population consisted of all postgraduate students of sports science in Tehran universities. Based on the Cochran formula, 276 of them were selected through stratified (proportional allocation) and random sampling. Data collection tools were questionnaires of Ariani et al.'s (2012) research capability, Fernandez-Perez et al.'s social ties (2015), and Latif et al .'s (2016) commercialization perception. The content validity of these questionnaires was investigated with the help of corrective opinions of 8 professors of sports sciences and 3 professors of entrepreneurship, and their reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability. In the first step, the data analysis showed that the status of students' social ties was desirable, and their research capability and commercialization perception status were below average. In the second step, the results obtained from SMART PLS 3 software showed that social ties and research capability have a direct and significant relationship with the commercialization perception of students' research achievements. At the same time, research capability was identified as a mediator of the relationship between social ties and the perception of commercialization. Therefore, sports science faculties need to take an important step in commercializing sports science research while developing research capability and social ties of students.