Validity and Reliability of the EMB Health-related Physical Fitness Test Battery for Secondary School Students

Abstract

PURPOSE: The Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) of Hong Kong has developed an EMB health-related fitness battery to evaluate the fitness level of students for a decade. However, limited studies are found to report the validity and reliability of the EMB protocol. This study was designed to investigate the validity and reliability of the EMB health-related physical fitness test battery on secondary school students. METHODS: In reliability study, 179 secondary school students (97 boys & 82 girls, age 11–21 yrs) participated in the field fitness tests including: 9-min distance run, triceps and calf skinfolds, 1-min sit-up, push-up, and sit-and-reach tests, at schools' playground twice with 2 weeks apart. Age and gender specific test-retest reliabilities (Pearson r) were computed for each fitness test. In validity study, another 169 students (90 boys & 79 girls, age 12–21 yrs) were recruited to participate in both field fitness tests and laboratory criterion tests with 2 weeks apart. Criterion tests included directly measured VO2 from a maximal treadmill jog test; leg raise test for hamstring flexibility; isometric curl-up test for abdominal endurance; isometric abdominal pull test for abdominal strength; total body isometric strength test; and % fat measured from bio-electrical impedance analysis. Age and gender specific criterion-related validities were computed. RESULTS: Test-retest reliabilities for all tests were high to very high (r=0.74 to r=0.99), except sit-up for boys (r=0.57) and push-up for girls (r=0.56). For criterion-related validity, most fitness tests yielded moderate correlations with respective criterion (r= 0.40–0.64), except low correlations for sit-up in both boys (r=0.22–27) and girls (r=0.10–15), low correlations for push-up in girls (r=0.16–0.29), but high correlation for skinfold test in girls (r=0.81). CONCLUSION: The EMB health-related fitness battery displayed very good reliability in all test items. However, the battery demonstrated fairly acceptable validities in most items, and poor validities in sit-up and push-up tests. Further studies are needed to develop more valid fitness test battery to evaluate health-related fitness of adolescents in Hong Kong.