Comparison of self-efficacy and self-esteem in athlete and non-athlete blind and visually impaired individuals

Background: several studies have investigated the role of physical activity (pa) in self-efficacy (s-ef) and self-esteem (s-es) of people, especially visually-impaired individuals. therefore, the goal of this research was to compare the s-ef and s-es in athlete and non-athlete blind and visually impaired individuals.methods: in this study, the population comprised all blind and visually impaired people in arak, among whom 92 participants with the mean age of 32.42 ± 11.46 were selected as the sample of the study by purposive sampling method. based on a demographic questionnaire, they were divided into two groups of athletes and non-athletes. the research instruments included a self-esteem index (sei) and a general self-efficacy scale (gses) which were completed by an interview. the results were analyzed using one-sample and independent samples t-tests. spss version 26 was used to analyze the data at a significance level of p = 0.05. results: the results indicated that overall in athletes, the average s-ef and s-es were higher than those in non-athletes. the results also showed that the s-es of athletes was significantly higher than the theoretical average (p = 0.001) and there was a significant difference between the overall s-es of the visually impaired and blind athletes and non-athletes (p = 0.001). conclusion: in general, the results showed that exercise and pa, especially group pa, may play an effective role in increasing s-ef and s-es of the blind and visually impaired people.