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A good exercise does not necessarily make for a good measurement tool and using such a tool may lead to wrong conclusions if used for scientific measurement and personal evaluation, yet it happens when using pushup tests which are subjective and lack reliability. This study examined the reasons behind the questionable reliability of push-up testing. Material and Methods: Fifty videorecorded 30-second push-up test performances were evaluated by 10 highly experienced raters in two separate assessment trials. The assessment involved counting the number of acceptable repetitions and identifying any technical flaws in the execution of the exercise. The collected evaluations were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Results: Statistical analysis (p ≤ 0.05) revealed significant inter-rater differences in counting in both trials. Comparable counting was only found among raters who marked the same technique as "perfect" and overall concordance on perfect execution was 79.4%. Intra-rater counting reliability ranged from r = 0.57 to r = 0.92. Three main areas of technique deterioration were identified: incomplete arm extension (10.2% of denied repetitions), inadequate arm flexion (7%), and failure to keep the body straight and rigid (6.3%), which was also the most disputed between the raters. Additionally, male raters were more lenient towards the technique imperfections of female subjects. Many miscalculations were also detected, often correlated with perfect technique execution (88% of cases). The second most common cause of miscalculating was raters' willingness to count a repetition that was interrupted mid-execution due to time constraints. Conclusions: The study findings indicate that push-up assessment is highly subjective and should be avoided in scientific or personal evaluations that require a higher level of precision. The reliability of the assessment heavily depends on the individual administering the test, and the average evaluator demonstrates only moderate reliability. To mitigate gender-based bias, considering a female evaluator for female examinees is recommended. Therefore, caution is advised when relying on push-up tests when more reliable alternatives are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an empirical analysis of the relation between recruitment in the allvolunteer Czech Armed Forces and selected economic indicators, including actual economic performance, situation on the domestic labour market and development of defence expenditures based on data for the period 2005-2019. The relation between military recruitment and economic performance was examined using values of GDP and GDP dynamics (GDP index). General unemployment rate, the economic activity index1 and the military-to-general average wage ratio were used to analyse the relation of military recruitment and situation on the domestic labour market. The relation between military recruitment and defence expenditures was examined based on general defence burden (share of defence expenditures in GDP), state sector defence burden (share of defence expenditures in state budget expenditures) and year-on-year changes in defence expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Push-up tests are frequently used to examine arm and upper body strength and endurance in both civilian and military sectors worldwide. The purpose of this study was to explore the objectivity of push-up performance assessments. Ten experienced raters individually assessed 50 videotaped push-up test performances using three different approaches. The three methods were 1) repetition counting with real-time view of videos, 2) repetition counting after in-depth analysis of each performance, and 3) marking performances that met the high-quality technique execution standard. Statistical analysis showed significant inter-rater differences in counting for both methods 1 and 2. The intra-rater comparison of methods 1 and 2 examined by the Wilcoxon pair test showed significant differences in the counting by 7 raters. The overall comparison of the methods showed significantly higher repetition counting for method 1. In the technique assessment part of the study, the overall agreement between raters was 77.7%. None of the performances received approval from all 10 raters, but 18 of the performances did not meet the requirements of any rater; thus, poor technique was more likely to be identified than high quality technique. When the technique assessment was taken into consideration, the raters who agreed on quality execution of the performances counted similarly using both methods 1 and 2, whereas without this agreement, the counting in both methods 1 and 2 was statistically different. The findings of this study suggest that push-up tests might be a reliable tool for physical examination only if the high-quality technique standard is met by the examinee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]