College Students\u27 Attitude Towards the Utilization of the Sport Recreation Center (SRC)

The primary aim of this paper is to examine the reasons for using or not using the student recreational center (SRC) among a frequent users and non-users. The second purpose is to use the research findings in order to make same recommendations for attracting stronger patronage amongst student users. Two groups of college students that were identified by user and non-user were invited to attend a separate focus group discussion. A user group consisted of six students (5 male, 1 female) with a mean age of 20.33 (Sd=.82), and the non-user group consisted of eight students (6 male, 2 female) with a mean age of 20.38 (Sd=1.30). The discussion was lead by one of the authors and was tape recorded with permissions from the respondents. The recorded tape was transcribed verbatim and analyzed by using the content analysis method by the three authors. Separate analyses were conducted for both groups. Results show that three themes emerged as important for the User group using the facility: the wellness reason; good facilities; and reasons associated with socialization. On the other hand, four themes emerged for the non-user group not using the facility: inconvenience; personal inadequacy; poor accessibility; and lack of interest. On how to attract more students, the User group suggested that students themselves must be knowledgeable in exercise; SRC should create more competition; and the SRC should keep up with the maintenance. While the non-user group suggested that more email information sent to them; the SRC should train their staff (e.g. for weight room staff), and the SRC should build a bigger space (especially weight room); and more competition should be offered. Furthermore, it is interesting to find that both the user and non-user have different opinions on how to promote more students usage. However, there appears to be a relatively good relationship between the two. This relationship has is in the conclusion and further recommendations are also suggested