Assessing the reliability and validity of agility testing in team sports: a systematic review

Morral Yepes, Monica, Moras Feliu, Gerard, Bishop, Chris ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1505-1287 and Gonzalo-Skok, Oliver (2020) Assessing the reliability and validity of agility testing in team sports: a systematic review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research . ISSN 1064-8011 [Article] (Published online first) (doi:10.1519/jsc.0000000000003753)

Preview

PDF - Final accepted version (with author's formatting) Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0. Download (833kB) | Preview

Abstract

The aims of this systematic review were to: 1) examine the reliability of the reactive agility tests and, 2) analyse the discriminatory validity of the agility tests. A literature search was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). We explored PubMed, SPORTDiscus and Cochrane Plus databases looking for articles about agility in team sports. After filtering for article relevance, only 42 studies met the inclusion criteria; 37 of which assessed the reliability of agility tests and 22 assessing their validity. Reliability showed a high ICC in almost all studies (range 0.79-0.99) with the exception of two studies. In addition, other studies also assessed the reliability of decision time (ICC=0.95), movement time (ICC=0.92) and decision accuracy (ICC=0.74-0.93), all of which exhibited acceptable reliability. Furthermore, these data show high discriminatory validity, with higher performance players being faster than lower performance level players (mean = 6.4%, range = 2.1-25.3%), with a faster decision time (mean = 23.2%, range = 10.2-48.0%) with the exception of one study, and better decision accuracy (mean = 9.3%, range = 2.5-21.0%). Thus, it can be concluded that reactive agility tests show good reliability and discriminatory validity. However, most agility tests occur in simple contexts whereby only two possible responses are possible. Therefore, future research should consider creating more specific and complex environments which challenge the cognitive process of high-level athletes.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

336Downloads

6 month trend

201Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.