The Trans theoretical Model is a behavior change model that incorporates the stages of change in physical activity behavior. The aim of this study was to determine these stages in adults living in Bandar Abbas, Iran.

This was a cross sectional study. Using cluster random sampling, 1600 subjects, aged 15 years and over, were studied from April to May 2007 in Bandar Abbas, Iran. To describe different levels of behavior change, we used The Physical Activity Staging questionnaire and collected data on five stages of physical activity change, including pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, readiness and maintenance.

In all, 1600 individuals with a mean age of 40.1± 15.2 were studied. Among these, 724 (49.4) were men. A total of 959 individuals (59.9%) were at pre-contemplation stage and 1.3%, 3.2%, 0.5 % and 35.1% were at stages of contemplation, readiness, action, and maintenance respectively. There were statistically significant differences between stages of change with regard to gender, age, and education (P<0.001).

This study revealed the majority of participants were in pre-contemplation and contemplation stages. These findings should be considered in future studies.

The high risk of earthquake, the severity of its adverse consequences and the failure of the exis ting policies to reduce damage and increase the preparedness of vulnerable communities, show that s tudying the role and impact of the social context on the mos t vulnerable groups is essential. The geographic condition of Tehran makes the city highly prone to the occurrence of various types of disas ters, especially the risk of a massive earthquake. Besides, the crisis management requirements and the lack of public preparedness if such events happen, reveal the need to find the factors that can influence the process of converting people’s readiness to the actual preparedness behaviors to make them able of coping with such a large degree of risk. Trus t is a process in which people may disregard their responsibilities to deal with a complex, uncertain situation and delegate it to others. People sometimes make their trus t on the basis of the meanings and values that exis t between them and the authorities, and decide on it. In recent years, social trus t has been considered as one of the mos t important and influential factors in public behaviors. The purpose of this s tudy was to inves tigate the relationship between social trus t and intention to prepare and preparedness of Tehran inhabitants agains t earthquakes.

This research was a cross-sectional analytical s tudy. 369 households in Tehran (February-May 2017) were interviewed and filled the ques tionnaire through the home visits by the research team in person. We used s tratified random sampling to choose the participants from the selected area of the urban regions. Different levels of urban development, social welfare and earthquake vulnerability classification of 22 dis tricts of the city were considered to involve the mos t possible variety of the households living in the area.
The Persian version the general preparation ques tionnaire (with 77 items) which has suitable reliability and the s tandard checklis t of earthquake preparedness behaviors (with 1 items) were used to collect data.
Both ins truments were validated in previous s tudies in Iran.

The mean age of the participants was 34 years. Mos t of them were men (63%), under-graduated (71%), married (62%), tenant of the house they were living (69%), self-employed (38%) or had short time job contracts (32%) and experienced at leas t one earthquake in the pas t (68%). About 75 percent of the participants were living in small households with less than four members. Almos t all of the s tudy samples (96%) were from low income level. The results of multivariate linear regression analysis showed that social trus t was the mos t important factor (p<0.001) that could predict the changes in intention of preparation in a positive relation. Therefore, the intention of preparation could be improved through enhancing the social trus t among the communities. The intention to preparation acts as a complete mediating factor in the relation between social trus t and real preparedness behaviors of the households in Tehran. The participants’ ages and the region that the household lived, found to be as the other influencing factors on intention to prepare agains t earthquake. The pas t experience of earthquakes and income level could predict the preparedness behaviors while the size of household showed a negative relationship with them. Despite the previous research findings, the ownership of the house, the marriage s tatus and occupation situation had no significant relationship with any of the preparedness dimensions.