Reliability of health‐related physical fitness tests in adolescents: the MOVE Program

Abstract

The aim was to examine the reliability of health-related physical fitness tests that were used in a French health promotion program 'Move…A priority for your health'. Participants were 174 French youth (88 children and 86 adolescents) aged 8·2-16·2 years. Aerobic fitness, muscular strength, speed and flexibility were tested using 20-m shuttle run test, ½ mile run test, basketball throw, standing long jump, shoulder stretch and 20/30/50-m sprint tests. Reliability was calculated for the basketball throw, standing long jump, shoulder stretch and sprint tests. The tests were performed two times, 1 week apart on the same day of the week. Reliability was examined with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and Bland-Altman analysis. With the exception of the ½ mile run test, which resulted in moderate agreement (0·66), all tests had high reliability. ICCs were 0·97, 0·93, 0·91 and 0·93 for the sprint test, basketball throw, shoulder stretch and the standing long jump, respectively. The differences obtained between the first and the second trial were non-significant. Results from this study indicate that the BOUGE health-related physical fitness battery, administrated by physical education teachers, was reliable for measuring health-related components of fitness in children and adolescents in a school setting.

Test–retest reliability of physical fitness tests among young athletes: The FITescola® battery

“…The 20 m run, for the overall sample and boys, and the 40 m run, for girls, were the only tests where significant differences were found between test–retest values. These results differ from those of previous studies conducted in the general population, where the 20 m and 40 m run tests were found to be reliable (Castro‐Pinero et al, 2010; Vanhelst et al, 2016). Notwithstanding, the 20 m and 40 m run tests presented good or excellent ICC values and strong to the almost perfect agreement in our sample of young athletes, with exception for the 20 m speed run in girls that presented moderate reliability (ICC = 0.57).…”

“…In addition, information on physical fitness fosters knowledge on understanding the physiologic development of youth (Brown, Patel, & Darmawan, 2017), while supporting the identification and development of athletic talents. Generally, physical fitness is assessed using a combination of tests aimed at analysing specific physiological components, such as anthropometric measures (e.g., height, weight, waist circumference), cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), upper and lower muscular fitness (MF), and agility and speed (Ortega, Ruiz, & Castillo, 2008; Vanhelst, Beghin, & Fardy, 2016). The physical fitness monitoring of adults athlete populations is well established, while in young athletes it is scarce (Armstrong & Barker, 2017).…”

“…It provides a set of instruments, including field tests, for assessing health‐related physical fitness in 10‐ to 18‐year‐old students. The validation of the tests that comprise the FITescola ® battery and the reliability of some tests, such as the 20 m shuttle run, horizontal jump, 4 × 10 m shuttle run, push‐up test and the sit and reach has been previously examined in youth (general population) (Artero et al, 2011; Baumgartner, Oh, Chung, & Hales, 2002; Ortega, Artero, et al, 2008; Ruiz et al, 2011; Vanhelst et al, 2016). Although some of the tests comprising the FITescola ® battery (e.g., the speed test) were tested for reliability in athlete samples from specific sports (e.g., football) (Pojskic et al, 2018), the reliability of the FITescola ® battery as a whole was never tested among young athletes.…”

Physical Fitness Evaluation of School Children in Southern Italy: A Cross Sectional Evaluation

“…Successful examples are the Assessing Levels of Physical Activity study (ALPHA study) [8], which aimed to identify reliable fitness tests for children and adolescents; the AVENA study, which aimed to evaluate cardiovascular fitness in youth around Europe [9]; the Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence study (the HELENA study) [10], which evaluated physical fitness over 10 European nations; FitnessGram [11], whose purpose was to increase the levels of physical activity in children in the United States; and EUROFIT [12], a program in Europe. All these attempts firstly detected the reliability of the fitness tests for specific populations and secondly provided age-related fitness percentile values [13,14].…”

Self-assessment of physical fitness in adolescents

“…The result of the test is either a successful "1" or unsuccessful "0" contact. According to Vanhelst et al (2014) the test shows high reliability (r = 0.91) in children and youth.…”