A person-centred investigation of the associations between actual and perceived physical fitness among youth with intellectual disabilities

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this person-centred study was to identify profiles of actual and perceived physical fitness among a sample of youth with intellectual disabilities (ID). Participants were 377 youth (60.4% boys) with mild (49.6%) to moderate (50.4%) ID recruited in Australia and Canada. Latent profile analyses revealed five profiles: (1) Underestimation of Average Physical Fitness (5.5% of the sample); (2) Moderate Overestimation of Low Physical Fitness (17.7%), (3) Moderate Underestimation of Average Physical Fitness (31.3%); (4) High Overestimation of Average Physical Fitness (28.3%); and (5) Moderate Underestimation of High Physical Fitness with an Accurate Estimation of Average Flexibility (17.2%). Profiles 1, 2, and 3 relatives to Profiles 4 and 5 included younger participants, more participants with moderate levels of ID, and participants with a higher body mass index. Additionally, profiles 1 and 3 also included a higher proportion of youth pursuing externally-driven motives and less frequently involved in sports outside of the school. In sum, our findings showed that the tendency of youth with ID to rely on upward or downward-lateral social comparisons may have resulted in a depreciation or overestimation of their low levels of physical fitness.

KEYWORDS:

• Balance
• flexibility
• strength
• physical condition/speed
• inclusive education
• special education needs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2024.2370150

Notes

¹ Two additional studies (Gråstén et al., 2021; Kolunsarka et al., 2022) were identified but not included as they included additional variables (i.e., physical activity intensity and/or weight status) that had an impact on the nature of the identified profiles.

² Nevertheless, results from Jaakkola et al. (2020) were not included as they do not report differences between actual and perceived motor performance within their profiles.:

³ Including or excluding these controls did not, however, modify the results associated with our main predictors..

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (DP140101559) and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (430-2012-0091, 435-2014-0909).