Design of a new test to assess cognitive skills in sport. reliability and validity study

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the reliability and validity of a new test for assessing cognitive skills in sport from a psychometric perspective. In order to show different sports situations clearly and reduce the influence of verbal reasoning from written items, 64 sports situations that corresponded to real problems found in sport and represented basic, technical, and tactical skills were drawn. The items were presented in a software application that is userfriendly for subjects not familiar with computers. Each situation had 5 response options. The experts’ opinion, Cronbach’s a (a=.77), a test-retest correlation (r = .72; p < .01), a Pearson’s correlation between the test result and the external criterion of the Physical Education teacher (r = .40; p < .01), a mean comparison between sample subgroups, and the factorial analysis showed reasonable evidence for assessing the test’s reliability and validity.