RELIABILITY OF TWO FIELD-BASED TESTS FOR MEASURING CARDIORESPIRATORY FITNESS IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Ayan, C, Cancela, JM, Romero, S, and Alonso, S. Reliability of two field-based tests for measuring cardiorespiratory fitness in preschool children. J Strength Cond Res 29(10): 2874-2880, 2015This study is aimed at analyzing the reliability of 2 field-based cardiorespiratory fitness tests when applied to a sample specifically made up of preschool-aged children. A total of 97 preschoolers (mean age: 4.36 +/- 0.4 years; 50.5% girls) performed Course-Navette and Mini-Cooper tests 3 times (familiarization test and retest). The scores obtained were compared with the results provided by the 3-minute shuttle run test, which is considered to be a reliable field-based test for preschoolers. The Mini-Cooper test showed a high reliability for children aged 4 (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]: 0.942; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.903-0.965) and 5 years old (ICC: 0.946; 95% CI: 0.893-0.973). The reliability of Course-Navette was also high for both 4-year-old (ICC: 0.909; 95% CI: 0.849-0.945) and 5-year-old children (ICC: 0.889; 95% CI: 0.780-0.944). The mean scores of the 3-minute shuttle run test did not show a significant correlation with the mean scores obtained in the Mini-Cooper test and in the Course-Navette test in the 4-year-old children. The results of this study suggest that Course-Navette and Mini-Cooper tests are reliable measures of cardiorespiratory fitness that can be used to assess health-related fitness in preschool children. Nevertheless, some considerations must be taken into account before administering them.