Examining the Feasibility of Supine-to-Stand as a Measure of Functional Motor Competence.

A person's ability to rise from the floor to a standing position is seen as a precursor for establishing and maintaining bipedal independence. It also is an important primer for the development of other fundamental movement skills and is associated with functional capacity in later life. Thus, the potential importance of developing this movement capability early in life and understanding how it may relate to global function (i.e., motor competence [MC]) across the lifespan may be underestimated. Therefore, this study examined the validity of supine-to-stand test (STS) as a developmental measure of functional MC across childhood into young adulthood using a pre-longitudinal screen approach and examining associations between movement components. STS time also provided a secondary measure of developmental validity in addition to an examination of the concurrent validity of STS against developmentally valid measures of MC (i.e., throwing, kicking, hopping, and standing long jump) in these age groups. Overall, results indicated that cross-sectional data "curves" for the STS components generally fit Roberton's hypothetical model curves. STS time demonstrated weak to moderate (r = −.28 to −.64) correlations to MC product measures across all age groups indicating that STS time can be considered a valid and reliable measure of MC across childhood into young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]