Abstract
The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL) is the first comprehensive protocol designed to assess a child’s level of physical literacy. Current approaches to analyzing CAPL-2 raw data are tedious, inefficient, and/or can lead to computation errors. In this paper we introduce the capl R package (open source), designed to compute and visualize CAPL-2 scores and interpretations from raw data. The capl package takes advantage of the R environment to provide users with a fast, efficient, and reliable approach to analyzing their CAPL-2 raw data and a “quiet” user experience, whereby “noisy” error messages are suppressed via validation. We begin by discussing several preparatory steps that are required prior to using the capl package. These steps include preparing, formatting, and importing CAPL-2 raw data. We then use demo data to show that computing the CAPL-2 scores and interpretations is as simple as executing one line of code. This one line of code uses the main function in the capl package (get_capl()) to compute 40 variables within a matter of seconds. Next, we showcase the helper functions that are called within the main function to compute individual variables and scores for each test element within the four domains as well as an overall physical literacy score. Finally, we show how to visualize CAPL-2 results using the ggplot2 R package.
Highlights
Physical literacy is defined as “the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life” [1]
The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL) was the first comprehensive protocol designed to assess a broad spectrum of skills and abilities that contribute to and characterize the physical literacy level of a participating child [2]
The get_pa_competence_score() function computes a physical activity competence score that ranges from 1.5 to 7.5 based on responses to three items from the Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire as they appear in the CAPL-2 Questionnaire
Summary
Physical literacy is defined as “the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life” [1]. Analyzing CAPL-2 raw data requires users to navigate through approximately 60 variables and perform dozens of tedious calculations which are derived from different cut-off criteria, existing variables, and newly created variables. This method is often time-intensive and can lead to errors in scores and interpretations due to incorrect calculations or data entry errors. R package for computing Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL) scores and interpretations below, the capl package was developed to analyze raw data from hundreds and thousands of observations (i.e., participants) all at once, in one simple line of code.
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