Better managers for more sustainability sports organizations: Validation of sports managers competency scale (COSM) in Chile

The aim of this study is to analyze the validity and reliability of the scale of competences of sports managers (COSM) in the Chilean context. The adaptation of the COSM to Spanish was carried out in accordance with the international methodological standards. A Spanish pilot version of the instrument was then administered to 33 municipal sports managers, whose comments on the instructions and the way the articles were written resulted in minor changes. Finally, this last version was empirically applied to 212 municipal sports managers (82.5% men and 17.5% women) from 129 city councils in 16 regions of Chile who participated. The original instrument consisted of 31 items grouped in six dimensions. The analyses carried out to check the psychometric properties of the scale determined the grouping of the indicators in three dimensions, retaining 22 items from the original proposal. The new factors were: Sports and Facilities Use Regulation (12 items), Budget Management (five items), and Communication Skills (five items). The scale presented adequate goodness-of-fit indices according to the parameters recommended by the literature, as well as optimal values of the different reliability measures. The use of this instrument will contribute to the process of diagnosis of competences in sport managers, with the purpose of planning relevant and contextualized training strategies that aim at improving skills and knowledge related to professional work. Likewise, the instrument can be used by the Chilean academic community in research processes involving sport managers’ competences.