The Reliability Of An Obstacle Course To Assess Irish Primary School Children's Fundamental Movement Skills

Fundamental movement skills (FMS) are the basic movement skills that act as precursors to more complex and coordinated movements. High FMS proficiency is positively correlated with physical activity (PA) participation. Many FMS assessment tools are product oriented and do not capture movement quality. Many process-oriented tools are long and unfeasible for large groups. Therefore, an obstacle course (OC) was designed to be time-efficient, product- and process-oriented to assess children’s FMS most used in Irish PA contexts. PURPOSE: Assess intra-session, inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of OC. METHODS: Participants (n = 215) completed two OC trials and were scored on time and skill performance. OC1 (n = 117; 40.2% female) for participants aged 4-8 years (mean age 7.45 ± 1.36 yrs). OC2 (n = 82; 50% female) for participants aged 9-12 years old (mean age 10.55 ± 1.21 yrs). The skills assessed were running, balancing, jumping, hopping, striking, dribbling, kicking, throwing and catching and each skill had two criteria (e.g. opposite hand-leg action when running). Participants were scored over two trials for intra-session reliability. Two assessors independently scored participants (n = 138) for inter-rater reliability. Participants with video consent (n = 116) were retrospectively scored for intra-rater consistency. Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) analysis was completed in SPSS. RESULTS: The mean time for OC1 was 39.20 ± 9.71 s and OC2 was 31.24 ± 5.27 s. Intra-session reliability for time was .932 for both OCs. The mean score for OC1 was 43.93 ± 7.71 and OC2 was 50.44 ± 5.61 points. One-way random ICC for intra-session reliability of scores in OC1 was .931 and OC2 was .894. Two-way random ICC for inter-rater reliability was .921 for scores in OC1 and .793 in OC2. Two-way mixed absolute agreement ICC for intra-rater for OC1 scores was .930 and OC2 was .900. CONCLUSION: Intra-session reliability for scores and time in OC1 and OC2 is good to excellent. The intra-rater reliability for OC1 and OC2 was excellent, confirming consistency between rating live and on video. The inter-rater reliability for OC1 was excellent but good for OC2. It may be more difficult to score older participants due to skill speed. Formal training may be needed for raters using the OC. The OC may need further modification for older participants. Supported by: South East Regional Development Fund