Reliability of Physical Fitness Tests Administered to Young Children

The purpose of this research was to establish the reliability of physical fitness tests for first- to third-grade children. The 26 subjects were randomly selected from a larger sample from urban public schools and tested individually on two days, one week apart. Tests included the Health-related Physical Fitness Test battery of AAHPERD and the modified pull-up of Baumgartner. Reliability estimates ranged from .83 to .99 for the former items so these items seem to be appropriate for assessing fitness of young children. The modified pull-up test was an unreliable item (r = .52). Two possible sources of variation in performance scores should be addressed, children's motivation and testing protocol.