Research article

Development and validation of psychosocial determinants measures of physical activity among Iranian adolescent girls

Ashraf Pirasteh^{* 1} , Alireza Hidarnia^{* 1} , Ali Asghari^{* 3} , Soghrate Faghihzadeh^{* 2} and Fazlollah Ghofranipour^{* 1}

¹Department of Health Education, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

²Department of Vital Statistic, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

³Department of Psychology, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

BMC Public Health 2008, 8:150doi:10.1186/1471-2458-8-150

Published:	7 May 2008

Abstract

Background

The present study aimed at assessing the psychometric properties of psychosocial determinants of physical activity-related measures in Iranian adolescent girls.

Methods

Several measures of psychosocial determinants of physical activity were translated from English into Persian using the back-translation technique. These translated measures were administered to 512 ninth and tenth-grade Iranian high school students.

Results

The results of a series of factor analysis showed that the self-efficacy scale contained a single factor, the social support scale contained two factors: family support and friend support, the physical activity 'pros & cons' scale contained two factors: physical activity pros scale and physical activity cons scale, the change strategies scale contained a single factor, the environment scale also contained a single factor. Chronbach's alphas, mean inter-item correlations and test-retest coefficients showed that these solutions were reliable.

Conclusions

These preliminary results provide support for using the mentioned scales to measure psychosocial determinants of physical activity in Iranian adolescent girls.