title: Reliability assessment of two militarily relevant occupational physical performance tests.
abstract: To determine the number of test sessions needed to stabilize performance on two military occupational physical tests and to assess their reliability, 10 male soldiers (22 +/- 3 yrs, 183 +/- 7 cm, 87 +/- 8 kg) performed both an indoor 6-station obstacle course (OC) and a repetitive box-lifting task (RBLT). The OC consisted of 46 cm-high hurdles, zigzag sprint, low crawl, horizontal pipe shimmy, 1.4 m wall traversal, and straight sprint. The RBLT required subjects to lift 20.5 kg boxes, continuously for 10 minutes, from the ground onto 1.3 m high platforms positioned 2.4 m apart. The OC mean +/- SD times (s), for sessions 1-4 respectively, were 37.4 +/- 2.2, 35.8 +/- 2.5, 34.7 +/- 2.1, and 34.5 +/- 1.7 seconds. The number of boxes lifted was 177 +/- 31, 194 +/- 28, 189 +/- 32, and 186 +/- 37 for the RBLT. Performance stabilized on the 3rd session for the OC (7% improvement over first trial, p < 0.05) and on the 2nd session for the RBLT (9% improvement over first trial, p < 0.05). The intraclass correlation coefficients were 0.92 and 0.94 for the OC and RBLT, respectively. This study demonstrates that both are reliable tests, but they do require administration of 1 single-trial session of RBLT and 2 two-trial sessions of OC before highly reliable performance data are obtained.
authors.affiliation: Military Performance Division, U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Clay E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Pandorf
authors.forename: Bradley C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Nindl
authors.forename: Scott J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Montain
authors.forename: John W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Castellani
authors.forename: Peter N
authors.initials: PN
authors.lastname: Frykman
authors.forename: Cara D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Leone
authors.forename: Everett A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Harman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005080:Exercise Test / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008887:Military Medicine; D008889:Military Personnel; D010809:Physical Fitness / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014891:Weight Lifting / Q000502:physiology