Reliability of Selected Physical Performance Tests in Young Adult Women

Abstract

0798 An increase in women's sport participation during the past decade has catapulted, in an unprecedented way, their sport-related lower extremity injury incidence. Thus, more work is needed in those areas related to their return to sports and pre-season screening, as to decrease injury rates in this particular population. PURPOSE: The purposes of this investigation were to establish the reliability of selected physical performance tests in female athletes and non-athletes, and to determine performance differences between groups. METHODS: Fifty females (25 athletes, 25 non-athletes) performed five lower extremity performance tests in two sessions. The performance tests included a figure-eight, up-down, side-side, and hexagon hop and a zigzag run test. Intraclass Correlation coefficients (2,k) were calculated for trial-to-trial, intertester and day-today reliability. Independent t-tests with Bonferroni's adjustment (α = 0.01) were used for each individual test to compare differences between groups. RESULTS: All tests showed good reliability (ICC≥ 0.76) values in the non-athlete group for all conditions (trial-trial, intertester and day-day). In the athlete group, three out of five tests (figureeight, up-down and zigzag) showed good reliability (ICC≥ 0.84) and the remaining two (side-side and hexgon-hop tests) showed varied reliability values from 0.48 −0.99 across conditions. The independent t-tests showed a statistically significant group effect (t≥ 3.041; p≤ 0.004) for all tests. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that these physical performance tests are reliable measurement tools in the female population and are capable of discriminating between skill levels.