Test-Retest Reliability and Concurrent Validity of Athletic Performance Combine Tests in 6–15-Year-Old Male Athletes

Gillen, ZM, Miramonti, AA, McKay, BD, Leutzinger, TJ, and Cramer, JT. Test-retest reliability and concurrent validity of athletic performance combine tests in 6–15-year-old male athletes. J Strength Cond Res 32(10): 2783–2794, 2018—Athletic performance combine tests are used by high school, collegiate, and professional American football programs to evaluate performance; however, limited evidence is available on performance combine test results in youth athletes. The purposes of this study were to report test-retest reliability statistics and evaluate concurrent validity among combine performance tests in 6–15-year-old male athletes. Sixty-nine young male athletes (mean ± SD; age = 10.9 ± 2.1 years, height = 154.4 ± 13.6 cm, body mass = 46.8 ± 16.0 kg) were divided into 3 age groups: 6–9 years (n = 16), 10–11 years (n = 26), and 12–15 years (n = 27). Participants completed 2 attempts of the vertical jump (VJ), broad jump (BJ), pro-agility (PA), L-cone (LC) drill, and 10-, 20-, 40-yd dashes. The results indicated that the older age groups performed better on most performance assessments compared with the 6–9-year group (p ≤ 0.05). The combine tests demonstrated consistently adequate reliability for all age groups, except for the 10-yd dash, which was deemed unreliable. Evidence of concurrent validity, and possible measurement redundancy were observed in the VJ vs. BJ, PA vs. LC, and 20 vs. 40 yd, but zero- and first-order partial correlations suggested tha...

Source: Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research - September 22, 2018 Category: Sports Medicine Tags: Original Research Source Type: research