A sociological explanation of athletic participation of university students

Sport is a socio- cultural phenomenon that leads to interact in a social network with complicated social relations and it has become the field of emersion of behaviors, attitudes, values and meaningful presentation of recent century. This multi-dimensional phenomenon has such an influence on human beings lives that nowadays according to athletic attitudes and activities of people; we can realize their thought, lifestyle and social capital. This is a survey research aiming at studying the effective social factors on athletic participation among the students of Islamic Azad university of Tehran. The theoretical and statistical data has been collected through survey method from the units of the Islamic Azad University of Tehran and by applying questionnaire and systematic sampling, and 310 people are selected as the sample subjects of this study by applying Cochran formula. The results of this survey show that there is no relation between level of study and athletic participation, but there are meaningful relationships between marriage status, gender, socio-economic status, employment, sport beneficiary, availability of sport facilities, social support and existence of champion athlete in the family and to be interested in a special sport with athletic participation of students. The results show, regressive multi variable analysis in step-by-step method, for dependent variable of athletic participation. Overall six variables have the most effect on the athletic participation, marriage status, gender, beneficiary feeling, and availability of sport facilities, social support, to be interested in sport. Generally the input variables could explain 24% of dependent variable(R= 47%).