Factors affecting the persistence of sports culture in the elderly following the outbreak of Covid-19 virus

The aim of this study was to investigate the Factors affecting the persistence of sport culture in the elderly following the outbreak of Covid-19 virus. The research method was mixed (qualitative-quantitative) whose qualitative part was done in the form of theme analysis. The statistical population in the qualitative section included people aware of the subject of the research that according to the purposeful selection, 15 people were selected. Also, the statistical population included the elderly active in the field of sport leisure in Shiraz, who had canceled their recreational sport. The research instruments included semi-structured interviews and researcher-made questionnaire. The content validity of this questionnaire was assessed using views of university professors and its construct validity was assessed by factor analysis. The reliability of this questionnaire was determined 0.87 after calculating Cronbach's alpha. In the qualitative section, to evaluate the validity of the reliability, transferability and verifiability, as well as to check the reliability, specialized committees were used. In order to analyze the data, coding and structural equation method were used. The process of data analysis was performed SPSS, PLS and Maxqda software. The results showed that the identified factors included communication, economic, motivational, health and infrastructure factors. The results showed that the communication factors with the effect of 0.930 are the most important. Improving communication issues, such as creating social groups, informing about new sport activities, and using mass media, play an important role in perpetuating the culture of senior sport leisure following the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus.