Norm construction and analysis of one-leg balance in children aged 3 to 6 years in Nanjing

Abstract

Objective To construct the norm of the one-leg balance of 3-6 years old children and provide the basis for assessing children's static balance.The results can used as one of the children's physical fitness evaluation content and applied into the fitness test. Methods The stratified random sampling method was used to select kindergarten children in 5 major areas out of 11 districts or counties in Nanjing, and 4 kindergartens were selected from each selected district according to the random number table method, with 65 healthy children in each selected kindergarten.Totally, 1 282 children of 3-6 years old were tested.The maximum scores by three trials were used as the one-leg balance score for each leg. Results The percentile 5, 25, 50, 75, 95 values of the one-leg balance of 3-6 years old children were recorded, respectively.The findings indicated that the maximum one-leg balance scores went up with the increase of age, and one-leg balance scores of the girls' was greater than those of boys'(t=2.552, 4.680, 2.732, 2.074, 2.538, 2.065, all P 0.05). Conclusions One-leg balance mainly reflects the ability of children's static balance.It is an important item of fitness.The results can provide clinicians with preliminary descriptive data for the one-leg balance of 3-6 years old children and provide reference for evaluating children's ability of static balance and balance training.One-leg balance can also be regarded as an essential item of fitness test. Key words: Child; One-leg balance; Fitness