The development and evaluation of a fitness test battery and web-based platform for monitoring key indicators of adolescent health in school settings

Abstract

Despite World Health Organisation recommendations, and unlike several countries internationally, the Republic of Ireland lacks a clearly specified strategy for monitoring health-related physical fitness (HRPF) levels in adolescents. The primary aim of this thesis was to develop a pedagogically sound and scientifically rigorous HRPF test battery, and web based platform, to facilitate monitoring key markers of adolescent health in school settings. This project involved four distinct periods of data collection, including: a national audit of current physical fitness monitoring practices in secondary school-based physical education programmes (O’Keeffe et al. 2020c); an examination of the test-retest reliability of a peer facilitated approach to administering fitness tests in schools (O’Keeffe et al. 2020b); the delivery of a HRPF test battery (entitled Youth-fit) to 1215 adolescents (age 13.4±.41) from a randomised and stratified sample of 20 schools, and the design of a web-based platform to facilitate large-scale collection and transfer of HRPF results to a centrally hosted database; and finally, a systematic evaluation of both students and teachers experiences of the Youth-fit test battery and software platform. Positive feasibility benchmarks including, recruitment capability, data collection procedures, resources, and participant responses, indicate that the Youth-fit test battery and software platform represents a feasible, pedagogically sound and scientifically rigorous approach to monitoring HRPF among adolescent populations in the Republic of Ireland