Abstract
The present article focuses on the questionnaires of three national surveys on physical and sports practises in France in 1985, 2000 and 2010 (as 2020 has just been completed, the documentation is not yet available). Applying the process of the history of science, it analyzes the list of questions asked for each survey and the connected documentation, with the aim of identifying the descriptive intentions behind the drawing up of each questionnaire. The article demonstrates that there existed three descriptive goals that followed one another : tastes and ways of life (1985 questionnaire), the evolution of individually-organized sports practices (2000 questionnaire) and the standardization of a statistical tool including important minis- terial preoccupations (2010). On the one hand, it draws the conclusion that translating an institutional request into a survey questionnaire always implies a mismatch. On the other hand, it also draws the conclusion that in France the national survey has evolved from being a descriptive academic tool of physical and sports practices to being a more multi-purpose descriptive tool that today gives an important role to concerns regarding management of physical and sports activities.