RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF A LABORATORY AND FIELD TEST FOR MEASURING ANAEROBIC WORK CAPACITY

Abstract

Twenty-six male and female collegiate and semiprofessional/professional soccer field players (age 20.4 ± 2.0 yr; height = 172.1 ± 8.2 cm; weight = 70.7 ± 10.8 kg) participated in this study to determine the reliability and concurrent validity of a field anaerobic shuttle test (FAST) and the Cunningham and Faulkner treadmill anaerobic speed test (AST). Convergent validity between the FAST and AST was also investigated. Each participant took part in three trials, a practice day and two test days (T1 and T2). A one-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to determine the intraclass reliability coefficients (WAT = .83 for W and .70 for Wkg-1 for average of two trials; AST = .97 for a single measure; FAST = .96 for a single measure). A dependent t-test revealed that there was no significant difference (p > .05) between T1 and T2 for each test (WAT = 425.1 vs. 421.6 W and 5.97 vs. 5.98 Wkg-1; AST = 41.9 vs 41.4 s; FAST = 56.0 vs. 55.8 s). Pearson Product Moment Correlations determined the concurrent validity coefficients, which were then corrected for attenuation [FAST vs. WAT (W) = −0.91 and vs. WAT (Wkg-1) = 0.73; AST vs. WAT (W) = .83 and vs. WAT (Wkg-1) = .75]. The convergent validity coefficient between FAST and AST equaled −0.88, indicating that the tests appeared to be measuring the same construct. Although the WAT was found to be only moderately reliable for this participant pool, the results of this study indicated that the FAST was a reliable and valid measure of anaerobic work capacity. The AST also demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity. It was concluded that the AST can be used as an alternate non-criterion laboratory test and the FAST as a field test for determining anaerobic work capacity of soccer players.