Abandono no andebol na Regi？o Autónoma da Madeira

this investigation has the purpose of study the dropout in the handball in madeira island. a sample of 4721 athletes was collected from the federation, between 1995 and 2004. we worked with a sub-sample, with girls that started practice handball between the ages of 10 and 14 years old and with boys that started between 10 and 15, in a total of 2293 athletes. the questionnaires were applied to athletes in the active and to those who dropped out, in a total of 230. in the methodological domain we calculated the average rates of dropout for the sample and sub-sample considering the starting age, the gender, the number of seasons and the age of dropout. analysing the questionairy, we used the test of ？pearson？ to detect the differences between the two groups. the results of the study showed that the median rate of dropout by season increases along side with the starting age of the athletes. similarly the dropout percentages during the first season are bigger if the starting age is higher. the main results of the questionnaires analysis show that the athletes that were active were more involved with handball than the athletes who have dropped out.