Abstract

Taking into consideration the benefits from the participation of young people with disabilities in adaptive sports, the target of the present paper is to determine whether the reasons for participating in organized physical activities are differentiated depending on the participants’ congenital disability and gender. According to the results, young people with physical and multiple (i.e., both physical and intellectual) disabilities, in comparison to the intellectually disabled, are more affected by a need to get to know their body's functionality and motor competence, than to have a beautiful body. Moreover, such young people consider sports as a key to achieving self-confidence, without actually being interested in the moral and emotional value of sports. Males, as compared to females, consider the notion of training/exercise more valuable than that of a beautiful body. As a whole, the role of gender in the reasons for participating in organized physical activities is limited under the light of disability. Still, some interesting interactions between disability and gender also emerged.