Regular physical activity is essential for health promotion, yet participation patterns and the motivational determinants of exercise vary widely among recreational exercisers. This study examined exercise behavior and motivational profiles among members of two Hungarian fitness centers using the Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale (PALMS). A cross-sectional survey was completed by 1087 adults, assessing demographics, BMI, exercise frequency, service use, and eight motivational dimensions. Health- and body-related motives were most strongly endorsed, while intrinsic motives (Mastery, Enjoyment) and social or external motives showed greater variability. Exercise frequency was positively associated with Mastery and Competition/Ego motivation, and regression analysis identified Mastery as a significant predictor of attendance, whereas age and female gender were negative predictors. Appearance motivation was positively related to BMI, Affiliation predicted participation in group fitness classes, and Others’ Expectations predicted the use of personal training services. Significant gender- and age-specific motivational differences were also observed. The findings demonstrate that although health and appearance motives dominate, intrinsic and social motives are more strongly linked to sustained engagement. These results highlight the need for motivation-sensitive approaches in fitness programming and public health strategies aimed at promoting long-term exercise adherence and disease prevention.

Background: Dropout during the youth-to-senior transition represents a critical challenge in competitive team sports, yet it is often examined primarily at the individual level. While burnout frameworks provide an important theoretical lens for understanding how accumulated developmental stress may contribute to career discontinuation, dropout is a multi-determined outcome that also reflects structural, organisational, and opportunity-related constraints. Limited evidence exists on how structural reforms, organisational continuity, and competitive performance environments jointly shape transition outcomes in elite youth handball. Methods: This study analysed longitudinal registry data from 1,898 male handball players who completed U20 eligibility in Hungary between 2013 and 2023. Dropout was defined as termination of competitive handball following the U20 stage. Multivariable logistic regression and survival analyses were used to examine the association between dropout and birth cohort, exposure to a major competition reform, homegrown status, late-adolescent club mobility, and team competitive strength during the final U20 season. Results: Overall, 31.8% of players dropped out immediately after U20 completion, with dropout concentrated between ages 18 and 21. Exposure to the post-2017–18 competition structure was associated with significantly higher dropout risk (OR = 2.47, 95% CI 1.89–3.23). Homegrown players showed substantially lower dropout odds compared with non-homegrown players (OR = 0.18, 95% CI 0.13–0.25), while late-adolescent club mobility increased dropout risk (OR = 1.34, 95% CI 1.11–1.62). Team performance context exhibited a non-linear association with dropout: players from both low-performance (OR = 1.56, 95% CI 1.18–2.07) and high-performance U20 teams (OR = 1.41, 95% CI 1.05–1.89) showed elevated dropout risk relative to those from moderately performing teams. Conclusions: Dropout during the youth-to-senior transition in handball is a systemic phenomenon shaped by the interaction of structural exposure, organisational continuity, and competitive performance ecology. Because psychological burnout was not directly measured, findings are interpreted as associations rather than causal pathways. Balanced developmental environments and sustained homegrown pathways appear associated with stronger long-term retention. These findings highlight the need for talent development systems to align youth competition structures with sustainable senior integration capacity.

The relationship between regional scientific investment and international competitive achievement in handball has never been systematically examined. This scoping review addresses that gap by providing the first globally contextualised synthesis of contemporary handball research, drawing on 205 DOI-indexed, peer-reviewed, English-language studies published between 2020 and 2026 and identified through a PRISMA 2020-compliant search of four major databases (PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, SPORTDiscus). Evidence was mapped across nine international research regions and six performance-science themes, and a novel Competitive Performance Index (CPI) was constructed from official IHF and EHF records to enable structured comparison between scientific output and senior men's competitive achievement across the same period. Regional analysis reveals four distinct science-performance relationship patterns. Scandinavia (CPI = 40; 16 studies) demonstrates convergence: sustained scientific leadership in injury epidemiology, neuromuscular risk profiling, and load monitoring co-evolves with four consecutive World Championship titles and Olympic gold. The Iberian Peninsula (CPI = 11; 39 studies, the highest volume of any region) and Central-Eastern Europe (CPI = 0; 30 studies) exhibit a leading-indicator pattern, in which scientific investment appears to precede competitive breakthrough by a temporal lag. The German-speaking region (CPI = 7; 28 studies) illustrates how frontier AI-driven performance analytics and youth championship success may function as competitive force multipliers. Western Europe (CPI = 15; 11 studies) demonstrates that strategically concentrated science sustains elite performance without high publication volume. Six thematic pillars structure the evidence base: biomechanics, injury risk and prevention, tactical and match performance, training physiology and conditioning, youth development and maturation, and technology-enhanced analytics. These domains are increasingly interdependent, reflecting a sport entering a phase of genuine scientific maturity. Critical structural gaps persist: approximately 74% of studies are male-only, North America and Oceania are almost entirely absent from the corpus, and the Technology-Enhanced Analytics category (5% of studies) substantially underestimates the true volume of technology-infused research due to the hierarchical classification rule applied. The CPI framework introduced here provides a replicable tool for examining science-performance alignment in handball and, with adaptation, in other team sports.

A rendszerváltozástól napjainkig élénk érdeklődés mutatkozik a magyar településhálózatban elfoglalt városi pozíciók értelmezése iránt. A kapcsolódó kutatások egy része komplex módon kezeli a mögöttes települési siker fogalmát, az elemzések a sikerességet befolyásoló tényezők szélesebb körét veszik figyelembe. Más kutatások inkább a sikeresség egy-egy kiemelt aspektusára koncentrálnak. Tanulmányunk célja, hogy rétegzett vállalati kérdőíves megkeresések (magyarországi vállalkozások régiók, vállalati méret és szektorok szerinti megoszlása) alapján bemutassa a magyarországi települések telephelyi megítélését, jellemezze az értékelések időbeli változását, és kísérletet tegyen típusképzésekre, egyidejűleg lehetőséget biztosítva a statisztikai adatalapú kutatási eredményekkel történő összevetésre is. A nemzetközi városrangsorok rövid áttekintését követően a magyarországi települési szintű kutatások elmúlt két évtizednyi eredményeiből válogatunk. Saját kutatási eredményeink közül bemutatjuk a városok telephelyi vonzerejének megítélését, megvizsgáljuk, hogy a vállalatok hogyan ítélik meg a településeket az országon és saját szűkebb régiójukon belül, valamint időbeni és térbeni összehasonlításokat is végzünk. Kvantitatív vizsgálataink alapján kijelenthetjük, hogy a statisztikai adatelemzésen alapuló kutatási eredményekkel összhangban, a nagyvárosok, a régió- és megyeközpontok kerültek a vállalati rangsorok élére. Visszaszorulóban van a kedvező működési költségek magyarázó ereje, ezzel szemben felértékelődőben van városaink nemzetközi kapcsolatrendszere, üzleti szolgáltatásaik, a helyben elérhető munkaerő felkészültsége és az előnyös innovációs kultúra. Úgy véljük, hogy kutatási eredményeink érdemi hozzájárulást biztosíthatnak az egyes települések komplex térségi tényezőkínálatának megalapozásához, ami fejlesztéspolitikai aspektusból azért sürgető feladat, mert vidéki nagy- és középvárosaink egyelőre nem részei a globális városrendszernek.

Background: The goal of this study was to prove that children’s physical activity decreases with age. A significant correlation was found between health awareness and regular exercise. The deliberately designed elementary school health education program had a positive effect on health behavior. Material and methods: The same questionnaire was used every year. Questions were alternately connected to health and sports subjects. The nutrition habits and trends of the students were explored, and personal opinions and feedback were welcomed. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis (p<0.05) were applied. Students were aged from 11 to 14 years. Results: Based on the BMI, more than 13% of the students were morbidly obese or undernourished. Almost 10% of the students were overweight or obese. More than 65% of students engaged in sports on a regular basis at the lowest estimate 2 or 3 times a week. Nearly 10% of children never participated in sport activity or physical exercise outside of physical education classes. Conclusions: tarting from the 8th grade, it would be important to include informational lectures on appropriate training in the curriculum, and it is also important to promote a healthy lifestyle among both parents and children and to operate a healthy school canteen. The infrastructure of schools and the range of sports activities should be improved.