Article

Valid and reliable measures of children's physical fitness are
necessary for investigating the relationship between children's physical fitness
and children's health. Objective The objective of this study was to estimate the
feasibility, internal consistency, convergent construct validity, and test-retest
reliability of a new, functional, and easily administered test battery for
measuring children's physical fitness. The study was a cross-sectional
descriptive survey applying physical fitness tests across age groups 5 to 12
years. METHODS: Each of the 9 items in the test battery consists of a compound
motor activity that recruits various combinations of endurance, strength
(force-generating capacity), agility, balance, and motor coordination: standing
broad jump, jumping a distance of 7 m on 2 feet, jumping a distance of 7 m on one
foot, throwing a tennis ball with one hand, pushing a medicine ball with 2 hands,
climbing wall bars, performing a 10 x 5 m shuttle run, running 20 m as fast as
possible, and performing a reduced Cooper test (6 minutes). The test battery was
administered to 195 children (aged 5-12 years) from 4 schools and kindergartens
in Norway. RESULTS: Overall, the children in each age group were able to perform
all of the test items, indicating the suitability of the test battery for
children as young as 5 years of age. With increasing age, total scores improved
linearly, indicating the adequate sensitivity of the test battery for the age
range examined in this study. Furthermore, even with the modest sample size used
in this study, total scores were normally distributed, thereby fulfilling the
necessary assumptions of most statistical procedures. For investigating the
reliability of the test battery, 24 children (mean age=8.6 years) in one class
were retested 1 week later. Test-retest correlations were high, with intraclass
correlation coefficients for individual test items and total score ranging from
.54 to .92. Limitations The survey was limited to samples of 5- to 12-year-old
Norwegian children. Larger samples in each age group are essential for
establishing age- and sex-specific norms. CONCLUSIONS: These promising results
warrant further development of the test battery, including standardization and
normalization based on a large, representative sample.
Enfant et sport

Langue : ANGLAIS