Investigating the Effective Factors on Improving The Social-Psychological Adjustment of Students in Sport Environments in The Post-Corona

Undoubtedly, in sports environments, everyone tries to show their best performance. Therefore, in these environments, in order to achieve success and improve the performance of competition in all age groups, it reaches its highest level (2). One of the problems among student-athletes is their incompatibility with sports environments. This issue, in addition to distorting the sports position of students, also causes problems in their education in different situations (4).Compatibility is so important that various researches have been done in this field. For example, Otto et al. (2019) showed that appropriate sports services improve students' athletic performance while improving individual adjustment in sports environments (9). Adaptation is more important in some situations and eras, including crises. One of the crises that human beings face today and has overshadowed all activities is the prevalence of Quid-19 virus (16). The widespread spread of the virus has raised major concerns worldwide (18). Given the importance of adaptation on the one hand and the impact of corona on psychological and social characteristics on the other hand, the need for social adaptation of students in sports environments in the post-corona era is increasingly understood. The lack of research on adaptation among athletes, especially students in times of crisis, especially the outbreak of coronavirus, has caused major problems for this group of people today. These problems are overshadowed by the culture of sports among students, their distance from sports environments and possibly the decrease in their loyalty and interest in sports. On the other hand, in the post-corona era, students will undoubtedly face problems in social adjustment, which can cause major problems for their presence in sports environments. Therefore, it seems necessary to conduct the present study.

The present study is an applied research that was conducted in the field. Also, the present study was mixed in terms of data collection method, which was performed qualitatively and quantitatively. The statistical population of the present study in the qualitative section included people aware of the subject of the study who were selected as a sample in the qualitative section using purposive sampling method until the theoretical saturation was reached. The statistical population of the quantitative section included all male student-athletes of high schools in Shiraz. According to the available selection, 240 student-athletes were identified and after distributing and collecting the questionnaires, 162 completed questionnaires were analyzed.The research instruments included semi-structured interviews and a researcher-made questionnaire derived from the output of the qualitative section. It had 28 questions that were scored based on a 5-point Likert scale. Content validity, Syrian and reliability of the questionnaire were also confirmed. In order to analyze the data of the present study, open, axial and selective coding in the qualitative part and structural equation testing in the quantitative part were used. SPSS software was used using SPSS software.

After coding, the characteristics extracted from the interviews were identified and summarized. According to the results, motivational, cultural, economic, personal, health and environmental factors are factors that are important for the psychological adjustment of students in the post-corona period, each of which includes several factors (Figure 1). Also, according to the results of the research model, it was found that according to the T-level of each factor, which is higher than 1.96, it can be said that all factors were significantly present in the research model. On the other hand, the results showed that the research model has a good fit.

The present study showed that in order to improve students' social adjustment in sports environments in the post-corona period, motivational factors have the most role. Pakpour and Griffiths (2020) identified that re-emergence in post-corona sports environments requires motivational issues. Motivational factors, by attracting students to sports environments in the post-corona period and improving their social relationships, cause their social adjustment to increase appropriately (22).The results showed that cultural and economic factors had an effect on improving the socio-psychological adjustment of students in sports environments in the post-corona period. It seems that cultural and economic factors cause students to be more motivated to participate in sports environments, which affects their behaviors and attitudes and facilitates their social adjustment (21).Another finding showed that individual factors and health-environmental factors are other factors affecting the improvement of students' socio-psychological adjustment in sports environments in the post-corona period. It seems that paying attention to personal and health factors causes public trust to be formed among students regarding sports environments in the first stage, and then the behavioral and mental problems caused by the outbreak of corona virus in the post-corona period are identified and considered (20).