Measuring Physical Fitness in Children Who Are 5 to 12 Years Old With a Test Battery That Is Functional and Easy to Administer

BACKGROUND: Valid and reliable measures of children's physical fitness are necessary for investigating the relationship between children's physical fitness and children's health. Objective The objective of this study was to estimate the feasibility, internal consistency, convergent construct validity, and test-retest reliability of a new, functional, and easily administered test battery for measuring children's physical fitness. DESIGN: The study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey applying physical fitness tests across age groups 5 to 12 years. METHODS: Each of the 9 items in the test battery consists of a compound motor activity that recruits various combinations of endurance, strength (force-generating capacity), agility, balance, and motor coordination: standing broad jump, jumping a distance of 7 m on 2 feet, jumping a distance of 7 m on one foot, throwing a tennis ball with one hand, pushing a medicine ball with 2 hands, climbing wall bars, performing a 10 × 5 m shuttle run, running 20 m as fast as possible, and performing a reduced Cooper test (6 minutes). The test battery was administered to 195 children (aged 5-12 years) from 4 schools and kindergartens in Norway. RESULTS: Overall, the children in each age group were able to perform all of the test items, indicating the suitability of the test battery for children as young as 5 years of age. With increasing age, total scores improved linearly, indicating the adequate sensitivity of the test battery for the age range examined in this study. Furthermore, even with the modest sample size used in this study, total scores were normally distributed, thereby fulfilling the necessary assumptions of most statistical procedures. For investigating the reliability of the test battery, 24 children (mean age=8.6 years) in one class were retested 1 week later. Test-retest correlations were high, with intraclass correlation coefficients for individual test items and total score ranging from .54 to .92. Limitations The survey was limited to samples of 5- to 12-year-old Norwegian children. Larger samples in each age group are essential for establishing age- and sex-specific norms. CONCLUSIONS: These promising results warrant further development of the test battery, including standardization and normalization based on a large, representative sample.