The purpose of this article is to explain the usefulness of and the procedure involved in hierarchical segmentation based on the CHAID algorithm as a multivariate analysis technique. A study carried out on leisure physicalsport behaviour of a university population served to facilitate an understanding of this method, the exhibition of its use and the interpretation of this technique. The study aimed to define the profiles of university students according to different degree of satisfaction with their physical-sport practices, as well as verify the existence of predictors of that satisfaction when all of them are related to one other. The article demonstrates the valuable capacity of this hierarchical segmentation technique in predicting and explaining certain behaviours, as well as determining the cause-effect relationship of these behaviours
