Reliability of self assessments for a cardiovascular fitness assessment.

Liguori, Gary; Mozumdar, Arupendra

College fitness courses typically require students to participate in a variety of physical activities and self-assessments. These courses are traditionally completed under the direct supervision of an instructor, and often take place in a gymnasium or wellness centre. Of late, there has been a tremendous increase in interest for online classes in higher education, and college fitness courses should be no exception. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of a self-administered cardiovascular fitness (CVF) assessment as part of delivering an online fitness course. A total of 575 students (386 male and 189 female, aged 18-22 yr.) from a mid-western university participated in this study. All participants were enrolled in a required general education wellness course, with.78 students in an online fitness class and 497 in a supervised fitness class. The CVF of all students were measured using the YMCA 3-minute Step Test, with a primary outcome variable of recovery heart rate (RHR). In general the lower the RHR the greater is the CVF. Students in the supervised fitness class performed the assessment under direct supervision of the course instructors. The online-students self-administered the CVF assessment at their own convenience. There was no significant difference between the mean RHR of the students in each of the classes. Further, the percentile scores, histograms, and results of the two sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test confirm that the distribution of the RHR scores were similar between the two classes. The results of this study indicate that a self-administered CVF assessment is just as reliable as a directly supervised CVF assessment. This study lends support to the idea of offering online college fitness courses, as self-assessed fitness data is reliable. Offering such courses will help to meet the growing demand students have for online courses.

CARDIOVASCULAR fitness; HEART beat; HEART rate monitoring; PHYSICAL fitness; POSTSECONDARY education; RELIABILITY (Personality trait)

International Journal of Fitness, 2009, Vol 5, Issue 1, p33

0973-2152

Academic Journal