Reliability of lower quarter physical performance measures in healthy service members.

Abstract

The majority of measures assessed had adequate reliability in this sample of uniformed service members assessed by novice raters. The measures of strength and power had moderate to good reliability with small measurement error, indicating the possibility of these measures to detect change over time. Although the measures of lumbopelvic endurance had good reliability, they were associated with relatively large SEM values compared to the group mean, thus limiting the ability of these tests to detect change over time. The measures of flexibility had limited reliability which may be associated with a restriction in range of the underlying scores that could artificially underestimate reliability. These results can help inform which physical performance measures should be used in future research to assess injury prediction and human performance optimization among uniformed service members.