Comparing Social Trust of Blind and Partially Sighted Elderly in Athlete and Non-Athlete

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Article Type:
Research/Original Article (دارای رتبه معتبر)
Abstract:
Background & Objectives

Trust among people is an essential characteristic of every society. Eric Erickson, the famous psychologist, believes that trust is a fundamental basis for any personal relationship. Social trust is one of the indicators of social capital and is a new concept that has been introduced in the socioeconomic studies of developed societies. Investigating social trust in the partially–sighted and blind individuals, especially the elderly, is crucial but has received little attention. Sport and physical activity could contribute to individuals’ interaction in a social setting; a sports environment has more capacity than other environments in this respect. Researchers have reported that performing a regular sports activity is a factor for preventing and delaying, or even treating problems associated with aging. It has also been argued that sports and physical activity could increase social development in individuals. Besides, sports could provide a desirable basis for developing social trust in the blind and partially–sighted elderly. The present study compared social trust in blind and partially–sighted athletes and non–athlete elderly.

Methods

This was a causal–comparative study, and the convenience sampling method was used for selecting the study participants. The statistical population consisted of all athletes and non–athlete blind and partially–sighted elderly, referring to the Blind Society of Arak City, Iran, in 2018. The statistical sample included 101 blind and partially–sighted elderly (43 athletes and 58 non–athletes). All of the study participants provided consent to attend the present study and aged >55 years. The research instrument was the Social Trust Questionnaire (Safariannia and Sharif, 2010). This questionnaire has 25 questions, and 5 subscales, including the behavior–based trust, cooperative tendencies, preciseness, honesty, and confidence. The validity and reliability of this questionnaire have been approved by Safarinia and Nasim Sharif (2010). The questionnaire’s validity was confirmed by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The reliability of the questionnaire based on Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient for the dimensions of trust–based behavior, cooperative tendencies, preciseness, honesty, and confidence was measured as 0.97, 0.97, 0.96, 0.96, and 0.96, respectively. Moreover, Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient for the total reliability of the questionnaire was obtained as 0.95. The questionnaire was provided to the study participants and completed by the interview. The collected data were analyzed using One–Sample t–test and Independent Samples t–test in SPSS. 

Results

The obtained results indicated that the social trust status was moderate in all studied blind and partially–sighted elderly. The average sample in athletes and non–athletes was significantly lower than the theoretical mean of society (p=0.001). The achieved results revealed no significant difference between the dimensions of social trust and total social trust in the blind and partially–sighted elderly athletes and non–athletes. However, the comparison of mean scores suggested that in all dimensions, athletes obtained higher scores than the non–athletes.

Conclusion

The status of social trust was unfavorable among the partially–sighted and blind elderly sample of the present study. However, there was no significant difference between the total social trust score and its dimensions scores among the studied athletes and non–athletes. However, observing average scores indicated that athletes had a higher mean score than the non–athletes. These achieved results highlighted the role of sport and physical activity in improving social interactions and enhancing social trust. The attained results revealed that the consideration of the social trust in blind and partially–sighted elderly populations requires further attention. Sports and physical activity, especially group activities, may significantly increase the social trust in this group.

Language:
Persian
Published:
Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies, Volume:10 Issue: 1, 2020
Page:
56
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