Risk management in health and fitness facilities

The aim of this study was to develop (a) "Risk Management Questionnaire in Health and Fitness Facilities" and (b) determine risk management practices in health and fitness facilities through the developed questionnaire. During the development of the data collection tool to be used in the study, 250 participants participated in the study for exploratory factor analysis and 200 participants for confirmatory factor analysis. In the exploratory factor analysis, it was determined that the factor loads of the items that load on three different dimensions were between .32 and .75, and in the confirmatory factor analysis, the goodness of fit indexes were within the acceptable range. It was observed that the Cronbach alpha coefficients of the relevant dimensions ranged from .85 to .90. As a result, it has been determined that the Risk Management Questioannaire in Health and Fitness Facilities has a valid and reliable structure. In the second part of the study, in which risk management practices in health and fitness facilities were examined using the scale developed within the scope of this study, 263 facility managers from health and fitness facilities located in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir constituted the sample of this study. T test, One Way ANOVA, Kruskal Wallis, multiple comparison Bonferroni test and Mann Whitney U tests were conducted in order to determine whether the risk management practices showed a significant change according to the characteristics of the managers and the facility they work in. The relationship between the dimensions of risk management practices of managers was calculated with the Pearson correlation coefficient. The major findings of the study indicated that the highest risk management practices for health and fitness facilities belong to the member services, structure and design and policy sub-dimension, respectively. In addition, risk management scores were found high in all sub-dimensions and in general. As a result, it can be said that the managers of health and fitness facilities fulfill the risk management practices in the facilities they work, provide a safe service to their members and fulfill their legal and moral professional responsibilities.