Early marriage is a worldwide problem associated with a range of health and social consequences for teenage girls. Designing effective health interventions for managing early marriage needs to apply the community-based approaches. However, it has received less attention from policymakers and health researchers in Iran. Therefore, the current study aimed to explore determinants of early marriage from married girls' perspectives. The study was conducted from May 2013 to January 2015 in Ahvaz, Iran. A purposeful sampling method was used to select fifteen eligible participants. Data were collected through face-to-face, semistructured interviews and were analyzed using the conventional content analysis approach. Three categories emerged from the qualitative data including “family structure,” “Low autonomy in decision-making,” and “response to needs.” According to the results, although the participants were not ready to get married and intended to postpone their marriage, multiple factors such as individual and contextual factors propelled them to early marriage. Given that early marriage is a multifactorial problem, health care providers should consider a multidimensional approach to support and empower these vulnerable girls.

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Background and aimIn social marketing, at the center of the program is consumer perception. The objective of this study was to explore the viewpoints of Iranian women for tailoring interventions so as to increase physical activity.MethodsThe social marketing model served as the framework of the study. Qualitative data were collected via six semi-structured focus group discussions (FGDs), in 2014 in Iran. Participants were 51 women, 20 to 60 years old, selected by purposive sampling, with a maximum diversity. Qualitative content analysis of the data was conducted by researchers.ResultsAfter data analysis and extracting initial codes, they were all categorized in four predefined categories of social marketing model (product, price, place and promotion) and related sub-categories. Most of the participants were inactive. Price was addressed by women as the dominant category of this study. The majority of participants emphasized the benefits of prevention of chronic diseases, fitness, staying young, and improving family relations. Most women preferred to do physical activity in a secure and enclosed female environment. And the majority of participants considered radio, television, face to face training, texting, and advertising billboards as promotional strategies.ConclusionThis study provides a unique insight into consumers’ values and motivations that affect consumers’ decisions to adopt physical activity, in Iran. It could also help researchers to design and implement intervention programs to increase physical activity.

Background: Theory of planned behavior (TPB) has not been adequately addressed in the field of physical activity among Iranian women.

Background: Postpartum women are a population at risk for sedentary living. Physical activity (PA) prior to pregnancy may be effective in predicting similar behaviour in the postpartum period. Objective: To test a composite version of the extended transtheoretical model (TTM) by adding ‘past behaviour’ in order to predict PA behaviour among postpartum Iranian women. Methods: Participants were 300 primiparous postpartum women from health clinics in Arak, Iran who completed the Iranian versions of the TTM, past behaviour and PA behaviour questionnaires. The mean age of the participants was 24.85 years ( SD = 4.4, range = 15–41). Data were analysed using bivariate correlation and path analysis. Results: The first revised model accounted for 43% of the variance in current PA and represented a good data fit (χ2 = 7.45, df = 4, p = 0.114). There were significant direct pathways between PA and stage of change (β = 0.51), pros (β = 0.30), and cons (β = −0.31), and significant indirect effects of self-efficacy (β = .39) and processes of change (β = 0.34). The final model, which included the direct effects of past behaviour (β = 0.28), explained 50% of the variance in PA and represented a good data fit (χ2 = 8.30, df = 5, p = 0.14). Additionally, in this model pros (β = 0.25) and cons (β = −0.26) are directly related to PA, and self-efficacy (β = 0.39) and processes of change (β = 0.34) are indirectly related to PA. Conclusion: The findings of this study support the application of TTM to PA behaviour change among Iranian postpartum women. However, adding past behaviour to the model increases our understanding of the population’s PA and may help the planning of more efficient interventions for promoting PA.