title: The standard difference score: a new statistic for evaluating strength and conditioning programs.
abstract: Inferential statistics help the strength and conditioning specialist to determine if a team is responding to a strength and conditioning program overall; however, such statistics do not detect unusual responses among individuals such as those who may be overtraining. This article introduces the standard difference score (SDS), a new statistic for evaluating strength and conditioning programs. The SDSs are standard scores (z score) derived from a change in a raw strength and conditioning performance score. They are simple to calculate and sort, easy to plot, and can be aggregated to detect athletes exhibiting extreme performance changes from a battery of tests. Standard difference scores, when evaluated with skewness, can be substituted for conventional exploratory statistics generated with higher end statistical software programs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Performance, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota, USA. robert.pettitt@mnsu.edu
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Pettitt
mesh_terms: D056352:Athletes; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000502:physiology / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D053580:Muscle Strength / Q000502:physiology; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000502:physiology; D010809:Physical Fitness / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values; D055070:Resistance Training / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*