Athletic ability assessment: a movement assessment protocol for athletes

Area of Science:

• Sports Science and Medicine
• Biomechanics
• Athletic Performance Evaluation

Background:

• Movement ability is crucial in sports science and medicine but lacks standardized assessment.
• Physical fitness and performance metrics are often studied without considering underlying movement quality.
• A reliable tool is needed to quantify movement ability for research and clinical applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Athletic Ability Assessment (AAA), a novel method for assessing movement ability.
• To evaluate the intra- and inter-rater reliability of the AAA tool.
• To establish reference values for minimal detectable changes (MDC) using the AAA.

Main Methods:

• The Athletic Ability Assessment (AAA) was used to evaluate 17 elite female football players.
• Intra-tester reliability was assessed by the primary researcher on two separate occasions (real-time and video).
• Inter-tester reliability was determined by comparing scores from five additional testers using video recordings.

Main Results:

• The AAA demonstrated high intra-tester reliability with an ICC of 0.97 and MDC of 2.9 points.
• High inter-tester reliability was also observed, with an ICC of 0.96 and MDC of 2.8 points.
• Individual exercise scores showed MDCs between 0.4-1.1 points and kappa values from 0.32-0.77.

Conclusions:

• The AAA tool exhibits high scorer agreement for total scores, providing reliable reference values for MDC.
• The AAA is designed to be a dependable movement assessment protocol for specific sports populations.
• The established reliability of the AAA is a foundational step for its future research applications.