Sports Participation of Female Students and Social Factors Affecting It

Exercising and physical activity is one of the ways to promote physical and mental health, so it is important to study the sport participation of different social groups from a sociological perspective. People's participation in sport activities is related to various social, political and economic factors. The study of leisure characteristics, types of participation, and the sport participation of young girls as a large social group is particularly important. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of social factors on the level of sports participation of female students. The theoretical framework used in this research is a hybrid framework. The research method is survey and the data collection tool is a questionnaire. The population of this research are 7700 female students of Shahid Bahonar University. 381 people were selected as a sample. The results showed that among general, championship and professional sports, general sport has the highest level of participation. Only 19.9% of students have a high level of participation in professional sports. Based on the results, social capital, sports socialization, sport costs and social support are the most important variables affecting the sport participation of female students. The result of multivariate analysis indicates that the independent variables predict 70 percent of the variation of the dependent variable. Also, the results indicate that reducing the burden of work and family responsibilities plays an important role in improving the sport participation of young girls.