Construction and Validation of Iranian Elite Athletes Lifestyle Questionnaire

Nowadays, lifestyle is an effective concept for studying the facts of life of different people. Elite athletes are always one of the most important groups in societies that their lifestyle is of interest to all. Studying the elite athletes’ lifestyles requires a valid and reliable tool. Therefore, the aim of this study was to construct and validate Elite Athletes Lifestyle Questionnaire.

The study was mix method that in qualitative phase for identifying lifestyle indicators 19 experts selected for deep unstructured interview in targeted sampling. Qualitative data was analyzed using the Glaser approach of grounded theory and its validity was verified by 10 experts. The statistical population of the quantitative phase was all of the athletes in premier League of football, futsal, volleyball and basketball that 308 of them completed the researcher-made questionnaire in stratified random sampling. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and Fitting Model Indexes were confirmed after correction of some questions.

The results showed the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyle tool has 10 dimensions include Responsibility, Financial Literacy, Leisure, Professional Thinking, Life Vision, Emotional Competencies, Consumption, Cultural Consumption, Religious Behavior and individual Issues. Also, the reliability of sub scales was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and for the whole scale of 0.89.

Due to the results the designed tool, has a good validity and reliability and can be used to study the distinctions of elite athletes lifestyles.