An Application of Test Accommodation and Validity Evidence of Trunk Push-up Test for Individuals with Special Needs

Abstract

This article was including two phases, which were 1) to introduce how to apply a test accommodation for developing a performance-based test and 2) to validate the developed test. In detail, the purpose of this study was to develop a Trunk push-up test in people with lower body limitations as applying a test accommodation and to investigate the validity evidence of Trunk push-up test. Method: Seven steps of the Decision-Making Process for Developing Testing Accommodations (Smith, 2002) were employed to develop the Trunk push-up test. To investigate the concurrent and convergent validity of the Trunkpush-up test, fifteen persons with complete and incomplete spinal cord injury at T3 to T12 (19 to 29 years old) were recruited. As criterion measures, one repeated measure (1-RM) of arm-curl (AC) and bench press (BP) were employed. Modified pull-up, dip, and hand grip strength test were employed as reference measures of Trunk Push-up test. All tests were completed in two days with one week difference. A counter-balanced design was applied to reduce carry-over effects. Descriptive analysis, independent t-tests (α＝.05) by gender with Bonferroni correction, and correlation coefficients (r) were calculated. Result: body weight, 1-RM Arm-curl, 1-RM Bench press, and hand grip strengths showed statistically significant differences between genders. Maximum Trunk push-ups in females and males were highly correlated with criterion measures (r ≥ .80 of AC and ≥ .61 of BP, respectively). Conclusion: A test accommodation was successfully applied to develop an upper body strength test for persons with lower body limitations and the Trunk push-up test was a fairly valid test for this population, but the accuracy of the test should be investigated in larger sample size and an effect of the test accommodation on the test score should be carefully examined.