Content Validity Index and Intra- and Inter-Rater Reliability of a New Muscle Strength/Endurance Test Battery for Swedish Soldiers

The objective of this study was to examine the content validity of commonly used muscle performance tests in military personnel and to investigate the reliability of a proposed test battery. For the content validity investigation, thirty selected tests were those described in the literature and/or commonly used in the Nordic and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. Nine selected experts rated, on a four-point Likert scale, the relevance of these tests in relation to five different work tasks: lifting, carrying equipment on the body or in the hands, climbing, and digging. Thereafter, a content validity index (CVI) was calculated for each work task. The result showed excellent CVI (≥0.78) for sixteen tests, which comprised of one or more of the military work tasks. Three of the tests; the functional lower-limb loading test (the Ranger test), dead-lift with kettlebells, and back extension, showed excellent content validity for four of the work tasks. For the development of a new muscle strength/endurance test battery, these three tests were further supplemented with two other tests, namely, the chins and side-bridge test. The inter-rater reliability was high (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC2,1 0.99) for all five tests. The intra-rater reliability was good to high (ICC3,1 0.82-0.96) with an acceptable standard error of mean (SEM), except for the side-bridge test (SEM%>15). Thus, the final suggested test battery for a valid and reliable evaluation of soldiers' muscle performance comprised the following four tests; the Ranger test, dead-lift with kettlebells, chins, and back extension test. The criterion-related validity of the test battery should be further evaluated for soldiers exposed to varying physical workload.