Quality of life of athletes with disability and some aspects of equal possibilities

The International Olympic and Paralympic Committees have decided that in 2012, the Olympic and Parolympic Games in London will take place at the same time. For this reason, the aim of our study was to determine whether athletes with disability in Lithuania have the same possibilities for sports – and thus for integration into the unifi ed Lithuanian sports system – as those without disability. An anonymous inquiry of athletes with and without disability was performed in 2006. We analyzed 235 questionnaires fi lled in by the participants of the study; 159 subjects were with and 76 without disability. The Lithuanian Paralympic Committee approved the questionnaires and gave an agreement for the study. The inquiry was performed in Lithuanian sports clubs for the persons with disability and in the Lithuanian Academy of Physical Education. The obtained fi ndings about the respondents’ personality and environmental factors indicated that the indices of self-awareness in all athletes without disability were signifi cantly higher than in athletes with disability (P<0.05). More than one-half (56.6%) of the respondents without disability indicated that their life was meaningful, whereas the respective percentage of athletes with disability was only 33.8% (P