The Impact of Sport on Social Integrity of the Iraqi Resident in Qom Province

Sport as an acceptable phenomenon in today's societies can be used to make social positive changes. This applied research was aimed at explaining the role of sport on social integrity of Iraqi residents living in Qom. The statistical population of all Iraqi citizens living in Qom province was unknown, of which 210 were simple random assigned to two researcher made questionnaires of sports participation and social integrity. The face and content validity of this questionnaire was confirmed by the experts. The reliability of the questionnaires was also calculated with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.79 and 0.82 for sports participation and social integrity. The research hypotheses were analyzed using structural equations model, and fitting model indexes were confirmed. The result showed that participation in recreational sports has a significant positive effect in internal social integrity of Iraqis living in Qom province (0.310). Participation in recreational sports has a significant positive effect in external social integrity of Iraqis living in Qom province (0.334). Participation in competitive sports has a significant positive effect in internal social integrity of Iraqis living in Qom province (0.540). Participation in competitive sports has a significant positive effect in external social integrity of Iraqis living in Qom province (0.419). Also, the R- squared indicated that participation in sport could predict 55.2% of the variance of internal integrity and 42.5% of the external integrity totally. In general, participation in sports could be a stronger predictor for internal integrity.