Preferencias deportivas por parte de estudiantes universitarios en Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

Introduction: Determining sports taste is of interest to both government entities and private entities, in order to program activities that promote the well-being of the community. Objective: To analyze the sports preferences of university students in the city of Medellí­n (Colombia). Methodology: Cross-sectional comparative descriptive research, applying a structured survey on the five-point Likert scale, where the sample size was 1 226 students of both sexes, selected in a multi-stage manner from a target population of 213 575 enrolled in university centers. The multivariate technique of variance and factor analysis was used by the method of main components with oblimin rotation, incorporating the polychoric matrix and establishing the number of components through a parallel analysis. Results and discussion: There is evidence of a highly significant difference between the sexes (p < 0.001) regarding the taste for sports; The sports with the greatest acceptance were soccer, basketball, volleyball, swimming, cycling, skating; and with less preference wrestling, golf, badminton, petanque and canoeing. Conclusions: The sports inclination is related to sex and the type of university, where men like collective activities and women of an individual nature. Students from private universities are correlated with sports that require greater economic investment for their practice.