Italian sportsmen and sportswomen, in search of their own wellness

In this chapter (the 4th one of "Charting the wellness society in Europe"), I have tried to answer at a lot of questions about Italian people, who practice the movement for health and who aspire to wellness; to do it, I have used the best data about Italian families and everyday life (indagine "multiscopo" sulle famiglie). This data were collected by the Istat-Italian Institute of Statistics, and elaborated by me in autumn 2018. Briefly in this chapter, first I have offered an overview about Italian people’s choices towards sport and physical activity, in last twenty years (1995-2016) [paragraph 1]. Secondly, I tried to answer a double question: how many Italian people do sports or physical activity and, more interestingly for a reader of this book, who does movement for health, aiming to their own well-being. Answers to these and other questions has been come by frequencies, rates, socio-demographic profiles, and by a typology of Italian sportspersons, based on their motivations to practice sports and physical activities, which was obtained by the SportComLab of the ‘Alma Mater’ by 2nd level analyses -- e.g. factorial one) [paragraph 2]. These outputs have been used for further studies in Italian movement practices and their links to mass and new media consumptions, and to risk behaviors, such as alchool beverages, tobacco or junk foods [paragraph 3]. So this 4th chapter shows the profile of Italian people, who is looking at wellness, and affirmes that it probably will increase in the future for a lot of socio-cultural reasons, such as the growing wish to keep themselves in good health.