[Development of a functional fitness test for the elderly].
A test of functional fitness defined as physical capacity to independently perform daily functional activities was developed for aged persons. The functional fitness test was composed of four physical capacity evaluation tasks representing physical abilities necessary to perform main activities of daily living; viz. sitting and standing up test, zig-zag walking test, hand working test with pegboard for dexterity evaluation, and rope working test for self-care evaluation. The reliability and feasibility of the test were examined with 765 aged persons living in the community. The distribution of measurement values in each item showed neither extreme skewness nor kurtosis. Retest reliabilities for each task were 0.857 to 0.942, but the second trial showed significantly reduced (p < 0.001) values than the first trial in test-retest. Significant relationships (r = 0.503 to 0.627) between measurement values in each items and chronological age were found in both male and female. Functional fitness test and physical fitness test scores were correlated 0.740. These results showed that the functional fitness test developed in the present study has a high reliability and feasibility to evaluate functional capacity of daily living in aged persons.
Oida
Y
Y
Meiji Health and Physical Fitness Research Institute.
Arao
T
T
Nishijima
Y
Y
Kitabatake
Y
Y
Nagamatsu
T
T
Ichigi
A
A
Ebashi
H
H
Maeda
A
A
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged / Q000502:physiology*; D016552:Ergometry / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010809:Physical Fitness; D011788:Quality of Life