Stabilität der physischen Fitness im Kindesalter: Konstruktvalidität der Referenzkategorien für den Deutschen Motorik-Test 6–18 im Projekt „Berlin hat Talent“ über fünf Jahre

Monitoring of physical fitness (PF) in childhood is important from a societal as well as individual perspective to ensure and support healthy child development. Hence, the German Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs together with the German Olympic Federation recommend the usage of motor tests, for instance in schools, to implement targeted interventions. Results of motor assessments are interpreted using reference categories to prevent overinterpretation of small but meaningless intra- and inter individual differences. Furthermore, temporal trends can influence the validity of these reference categories. The aims of the study are (1) to examine short- and medium-term changes in PF in middle childhood (2) to evaluate implications for reference values and the validity of the construct PF, (3) to provide valid reference values for eight- to nine-year-old children. In the school years 2011–2016, over 20,000 third-graders completed the German Motor Test (GMT) in the project “Berlin has Talent”. Possible temporal trends are examined using regressions and cross-tables. Implications of these changes on the construct PF are analyzed using Rasch measurement. Four out of seven tasks showed temporal changes. However, the validity and unidimensionality of the GMT are confirmed (p > 0.90), if balancing backwards is excluded from the model. On the one hand, task-related changes of children’s motor performance within five years support the requirement of a comprehensive continuous monitoring to enable early interventions. On the other hand, they call for continuous evaluation of reference values of the GMT, which should rely on representative and sufficiently large samples.