Study of the Barriers to the Development of Sports-for-all in Golestan Province, Iran

The aim of the present study was to investigate the barriers to the development of sports-for-all in Golestan province, Iran. The population of this study included 150 physical education instructors of Golestan universities, directors and experts of Youth Affairs and Sports Office of Golestan province and the cities, and the heads of the sports boards, all of which were selected as total number samples. To collect data, the researcher-made questionnaires whose validity was approved by several university experts were used, and the reliability was approved via Cronbach's alpha (α = 0.82). The questionnaire consisted of 18 questions on the evaluation of internal barriers (9 items) and external barriers (9 items) of sports-for-all of Golestan province in Likert’s five-option scale. Data were analyzed using the Friedman test and descriptive statistics. The results showed that sports-for-all in Golestan faces a number of internal and external obstacles. Funding and financing deficits (5.97) and the structural weakness of sports-for-all manpower in the cities (5.72) are of the major internal barriers. The most important external barriers are economic and livelihood problems (5.96) and the mechanical life and inactivity effects (5.46). Considering the role of sports-for-all, because of its association with different groups of people, removing the present barriers seem necessary for its development.