Prioritizing and Developing Guidelines for Participation in Sports for All Activities among Tehran Citizens

The purpose of the present research was to investigate barriers of physical activity and participation in sport for all activities among Tehran citizenry and presenting their removal solutions. This survey was Descriptive–analytical and its statistical population was all male and female participating in sport for all activities in Tehran city (6600 female and 2400 male organized people) and finally, 370 people (156 male and 214 female) participated in the research and completed barriers questionnaires. Barriers questionnaire was a five-point likert-type scale that consist of 61 items and its face and content validity verified by the experts and its reliability was calculated in a pilot study using Cronbach's alpha (?=0.936). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with a Varimax rotation was used to identifying factors and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirming factors and presenting model. In EFA, of the 61 barriers, 53 items having appropriate factor loading were stand in six factors namely organizational and managerial, environmental, psychological, interpersonal, Lack of social support and time limitations. CFA results showed that “interpersonal” and “time limitations” factors had most effect in explanation of the barriers of sport participation (respectively with 0.88 and 0.85 factor loadings). Paying attention to barriers identified in this research and tries to develop removal solutions can cause to mass participation of the Tehran citizenry in physical activity and sport for all programs. In addition, in this research base on identified barrier factors, some strategies were presented in order to remove barriers and development of sport for all in Tehran city.