Perception of Lifestyles. A comparison between sport practising and not practising young people

The study presents a part of the second step of the research included in a project aimed at highlighting the outline of the sports club as a more inclusive place from the point of view of young people. The main aim of the project is to find strategies to reduce the drop-out by modifying the organization of sports clubs. One of the main sections of the research focussed on the perception and the lifestyle of four different profiles of adolescents who are identified by the specific structure of the questionnaire: competitive, amateur, who abandoned, sedentary. The project started in 2006 and is divided into three phases, the first involved students of the sports sections of two secondary schools in Ferrara. During the second part, the students, after a training course, joined the researchers of the project. They interviewed peers, coaches, and directors of Sports Clubs. The tools were also questionnaires and workshops. The last phase, currently being carried out, involves two other towns using the same methodology. Since the research will continue till the end of 2009, the results are still partial and under development. We present the findings concerning the area of Life Styles: the four profiles seem to be significantly satisfied with their LS, the substantial difference concerns the role of practice. The amateurs, who abandoned and the sedentary are conscious that increasing physical activity could improve LS; the competitive group clearly declare their unwillingness to do more physical activity. The most interesting findings concern the awareness of the benefit of physical activity for active LS: the competitive and the amateurs are four times more conscious than the sedentary that a lack of physical activity could worsen the lifestyle; a very interesting finding ,which warrants further investigation, is the attitude that walking and cycling are not considered as good practices to improve active LS.