Psychological and Social Factors Influencing the Development of Sports for Athletes with Disabilities in Tajikistan

The present study identifies the psychological and social factors influencing the development of sports for athletes with disabilities in Tajikistan. The present study employed the correlation method and structural equation modeling. Three hundred athletes with disabilities were selected using convenience sampling, and each one completed a researcher-made questionnaire. With 56 questions in the psychological and social fields, this questionnaire was designed based on theoretical foundations, interviews with athletes with disabilities, and experts, and five academic experts confirmed its face-content validity. The results of exploratory factor analysis identified ten factors: media, family, social support, social interaction, respect, motivation, joy and happiness, fear, self-confidence, and self-efficacy; confirmatory factor analysis in LISREL confirmed these factors. This study showed that social factors, including respect, social support, media, family, and social interaction, are the most critical barriers to the development of sports for athletes with disabilities, respectively. The psychological factors of participation motivation, self-esteem, fear, self-efficacy, pleasure, and vitality, respectively, were also found to be most critical