Test-Retest Reproducibility and Inter-Rater Reliability of a Motor Skill Test Battery for Adults

• Published in: International journal of sports medicine 2001-04, Vol.22 (3), p.192-200
• Main Author: Rinne, M. B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Analysis of Variance; Biological and medical sciences; Biomechanical Phenomena; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Male; Mass Screening - instrumentation; Middle Aged; Motor Skills - physiology; Neurologic Examination - instrumentation; Postural Balance; Reproducibility of Results; Surveys and Questionnaires; Training and Testing; Vertebrates: body movement. Posture. Locomotion. Flight. Swimming. Physical exercise. Rest. Sports; Walking
• ISSN: 0172-4622; 1439-3964
• DOI: 10.1055/s-2001-16384

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the test-retest and inter-rater reliability of nine selected tests for the following basic motor skills: balance, orientation, sense of rhythm, kinaesthetic precision and flexibility. Twenty-five healthy, non-sporting volunteers (14 men, 11 women, aged 36-72 years) were tested in three sessions at one-week intervals by two raters. For the tests of balance on a bar, tandem walking backwards and forwards and ball bouncing, the within-participant and between-session repeatability, as assessed by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), was high (ICC 0.83-0.96), and for the rhythm test it was fair (ICC 0.70). The inter-rater reliability was also high for all the tests (ICC 0.88-0.96) except that for rhythm (ICC 0.76). In a test-retest design, these tests were sensitive enough to produce sufficient variation between participants in terms of differentiating between individuals. The learning effect was the most remarkable between the pretest and test sessions, and the reliability was better for the test-retest session although a statistically significant difference existed only for tandem walking forwards (p