Background: Encouraging physical activity is an important public health priority worldwide due to its multiple health outcomes, impact on quality of life, and significant savings in hospitalization and healthcare costs among older adults. Recently, physical literacy, a concept to support participation and maintenance of physical activity in older adults, has been introduced.

Aims: The aim of the present study was to determine the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Perceived Physical Literacy Scale for the elderly.

Methods: The present study was descriptive-correlational. For this purpose, 408 elderly men and women completed the Persian version of the Perceived Physical Literacy Scale for the Elderly. First, the accuracy of the translation of the Persian version of the questionnaire was confirmed using the back-translation method, and then confirmatory factor analysis based on structural equation modeling was used to determine the construct validity of the questionnaire, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to determine internal consistency. Also, for the temporal reliability of the questions, intraclass correlation was used with the test-retest method.

Results: The results showed that the goodness of fit index and adaptive fit index were desirable. The temporal reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficient for self-efficacy and its dimensions were higher than 0.7 .

Conclusion: Based on the results, the Persian version of the Perceived Physical Literacy Scale for the Elderly has acceptable construct validity and internal and temporal reliability, and it can be used as a valid and reliable tool for assessing the physical literacy of Iranian elderly people.