Abstract

Background: Preseason movement screening can identify modifiable risk factors, deterioration of function, and potential for injury in baseball players. Limited resources and time intensive testing procedures prevent high school coaches from accurately performing frequent movement screens on their players.

Purpose: To establish the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of a novel arm care screening tool based on the concepts of the Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) and Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA™) in high school coaches.

Study Design: Methodological intra- and inter-rater reliability study.

Methods: Thirty-one male high school baseball players (15.9 years ± 1.06) were independently scored on the Arm Care Screen (ACS) by three examiners (two coaches, one physical therapist) in real-time and again seven days later by reviewing video recordings of each players' initial screening performance. Results from each examiner were compared within and between raters using Cohen's kappa and percent absolute agreement.

Results: Substantial to excellent intra-rater and inter-rater reliability were established among all raters for each component of the ACS. The mean Cohen's kappa coefficient for intra-rater reliability was 0.76 (95% confidence interval, 0.54-0.95) and percent absolute agreement ranged from 0.82-0.94 among all raters. Inter-rater reliability demonstrated a mean Cohen's kappa value of 0.89 (95% confidence interval, 0.77-0.99) while percent absolute agreement between raters ranged from 0.81-1.00. Intra- and inter-rater reliability did not differ between raters with various movement screening experience (p> 0.05).

Conclusions: High school baseball coaches with limited experience screening movement can reliably score all three components of the ACS in less than three minutes with minimal training.

Level of Evidence: Level 3, Reliability study.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2021

Notes/Citation Information

Published in International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, v. 16, issue 6.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-4.0). View this license’s legal deed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 and legal code at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode for more information.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.26603/001c.29680

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Figure 1

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Figure 2

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Table 1. Descriptive Characteristics of High School Baseball Players

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Table 2. Intra-rater Reliability of ACS Components (n=31)

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Table 3. Inter-rater Reliability of ACS Components (n=31)

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