Purpose: Around 10% of adolescents suffer from a chronic condition, but little is known about their sports practice. The objective is to assess whether there are differences both in sport practice and reasons for being sedentary between adolescents with chronic conditions and their healthy counterparts.
Methods: Data were drawn from the SMASH 2002 database, a cross-sectional survey of 7,548 adolescents aged 16-20 years in Switzerland using a self-administered questionnaire. The chronic condition group (CCG) included 374 males and 380 females reporting a chronic disease and/or disability. Control group included 3,462 males and 3,227 females. Four categories of extracurricular sport practice were defined: daily or almost; 2/3 times a week; about once a week; none. Those in the later category were compared regarding the reasons for not practicing sport. All analyses were controlled by age, academic track (student/apprentice) and perceived health status (good/poor) and run separately by gender using STATA9. Results are expressed as adjusted odds ratio with 95% confidence intervals.