Stakeholder Priorities for Strengthening Sports Medicine Services in Kazakhstan: A Cross-Sectional Health-System Survey.

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Sports medicine systems require evidence-informed prioritization of medical, rehabilitation, preventive, and organizational interventions. This study aimed to assess and rank stakeholders' perceived importance of proposed development domains for sports medicine in Kazakhstan, rather than the current performance or quality of the existing system. Methods: An anonymous cross-sectional survey was conducted between December 2025 and January 2026 among 100 stakeholders involved in medical care, rehabilitation, diagnostics, coaching and training, athletic participation, or sports administration. Twelve development domains were rated on a five-point priority scale, followed by a Top-5 selection task. Because the survey form did not technically enforce selection of exactly five options, the primary Top-5 analysis was restricted to the 47 respondents who completed the task as instructed. Results: Among these 47 respondents, rehabilitation and recovery programs were selected by 30/47 (63.8%), injury prevention by 26/47 (55.3%), and both accessibility of medical support and financing/sustainability by 24/47 (51.1%). The all-questionnaire sensitivity ranking (N = 100) showed strong but incomplete agreement with the primary exact-five ranking (Spearman's ρ = 0.889; Kendall's τ = 0.762). The 12-domain ratings showed a pronounced ceiling/invariant-response pattern, and subgroup analyses were treated as exploratory because of small and compositionally unequal subgroups. Conclusions: The findings describe perceived priorities within the surveyed non-probability stakeholder sample. Given the purposive, snowball-assisted recruitment strategy and the lack of full psychometric validation of the study-specific questionnaire, they should not be interpreted as nationally representative estimates of service quality, current shortages, or national policy priorities.