**3. Motives for undertaking sports-recreational activity of German school students**

The study also included the motives of young people living in the alpine region for undertaking sports-recreational activities, taking their environmental and gender characteristics into account. The division of motives proposed by Steffgen et al. [9], which combines six elements: esthetics, health, relaxation, physical fitness, social aspects and risk, was used.

The results of the study presented in **Figure 2** show that the most important motives for performing recreational sport by German school students, regardless of gender or environmental conditions, are health, physical fitness and social aspects, understood as the willingness and the possibility for collective sports performance and human interaction.

**Figure 2.**

*Motives for undertaking sports-recreational activities of German school students (in percentages).*


#### **Table 4.**

*Motives for undertaking sports-recreational activities of German school students (boys: n = 184; girls: n = 203).*


#### **Table 5.**

*Motives for undertaking sports-recreational activities of German male school students (large city: n = 91; small town: n = 93).*

Health as one of the most important motives for athletic activity is dominantly preferred by the studied girls, which according to the OR = 1.52 value of the Receiver Operating Characteristic statistical analysis, declare this motive more than 1 ½ times more often than the studied boys (**Table 4**). Even more distinct differences in favor of the esthetic motive (*p* < 0.0001), occurring in girls more than 4 times more often than boys, are evidenced by the OR = 4.59. For the studied boys, physical fitness and risk were very important motives for undertaking sport. The results show that there are greatly significant differences in the dominance of these motives when considering gender of the studied youth. Physical fitness as a motive for sport is more prevalent in boys than girls (*p* < 0.0001, OR = 1.41) These differences are even greater when considering risk, which is 3 times more likely to motivate boys than girls (*p* < 0.0001, OR = 2.96) Another important motive for

*Selected Aspects of Sports: Recreational Activity of German School Students DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97741*


#### **Table 6.**

*Motives for undertaking sports-recreational activities of German female school students (large city: n = 97; small town: n = 106).*

sport activity turns out to be relaxation, by which <sup>2</sup> /3 of all the respondents were guided.

Based on the analysis of the statistical results of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) on the intensity of boys' (**Table 5**) and girls' (**Table 6**) motives from large cities and small towns, environmental conditions have no influence on the intensification of diagnosed motives for taking up sport activity among the respondents (no statistically significant differences and similar values of chance of occurrence of examined motives).

## **4. Frequency of practicing sports of German school students**

One of the most important aspects of sport and recreational activities is the frequency with which sports are practiced in free time. Based upon the results in **Figure 3**, it can be ascertained that the young German people tested, regardless of the gender and milieu, are generally very involved in practicing sport. A total of 43% of them declare that they practice sport once or twice a week, and almost 35% practice it very often (three times a week or more). Instead, the percentage of German school students who do not practice recreational sports at all (4%) is of marginal significance.

**Figure 3.** *Frequency of practicing sports of German school students (in percentages).*


#### **Table 7.**

*Frequency of practicing sports German school students (boys: n = 184; girls: n = 203).*


#### **Table 8.**

*Frequency of practicing sports of German male school students (large city: n = 91; small town: n = 93).*


#### **Table 9.**

*Frequency of practicing sports of German female school students (large city: n = 97; small town: n = 106).*

The results of ROC statistical analysis regarding the frequency of sports performance by boys and girls living in the Alpine region of Germany (**Table 7**) allow to conclude that the gender of respondents generally has no substantial impact on preferences in this area because no statistically significant differences were noted (*p* > 0.05), and the relative odds of choosing the analyzed categories regarding the frequency of practicing sports turned out to be similar in both the male and female population groups, except for the relatively higher preferences of girls in the category "I rarely perform sports" (OR = 1.34) and the relatively greater preferences of boys regarding the "I perform sports very often" category (OR = 1.33).

Based on statistical analysis of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) results presented in **Table 8**, it can be concluded that boys from both large cities and small towns in Germany have a similar preference for frequency of sports performance, as indicated by the absence of statistically significant differences (*p* > 0.05), as well as similar values of odds for all categories of sports performance

### *Selected Aspects of Sports: Recreational Activity of German School Students DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97741*

intensity (OR from 0.93 to 1.05). Similarly to boys, the studied girls from both environments (**Table 9**) also demonstrate similar preferences regarding particular categories of sports performance frequency, as indicated by *p* > 0.05 and OR values (1.02–1.12).
