Initial development and content validation of a comprehensive physical, psychosocial and skill related fitness scale in school going children
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17267/2238-2704rpf.2026.e6605Keywords:
Physical Fitness, Psychosocial Factors, Health, Child, Schools, Validation Study, Motor Skills, Surveys and Questionnaires, Delphi TechniqueAbstract
INTRODUCTION: Physical, psychosocial and skill-related fitness are the essential factors of overall fitness in children. Developing these components of fitness is crucial for overall health, well-being, and athletic potential. There are several scales to evaluate children's physical fitness. Also, psychosocial assessment scales are available for school-going children. To date, no scale is available to measure the combined physical, psychosocial and skill-related fitness in school-going children. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to generate items and domains related to physical, psychosocial and skill-related fitness in children and to validate the content by experts. METHODS: Items were generated through a reproducible, extensive literature search conducted between January 1990 and February 2025 across PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library and PEDro using predefined Boolean search combinations. All complete search strings and dates have been documented for transparency. 16 studies contributed to item extraction following eligibility screening. The Delphi process was conducted in two structured rounds with domain-specific expert panels (n=8, including paediatricians, sports physiotherapists, paediatric physiotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists with ≥10 years of experience). Item-level content validity index (I-CVI≥ 0.78) and scale-level content validity index (S-CVI/Ave ≥ 0.90) were predefined as acceptance criteria. Primary outcome: achievement of acceptable I-CVI and S-CVI thresholds. Secondary outcome: quantitative refinement of items and domain structure. RESULTS: From 3300 identified records, 16 studies contributed to item extraction, 19 items were derived from literature and 12 from expert input (total = 31 items). After, two Delphi rounds 16 items were retained under physical skill domains (S-CVI=1) and 15 under psychosocial domain (S-CVI = 0.90) CONCLUSION: The comprehensive scale addressing physical, psychosocial and skill related fitness in school going children under the proposed domains, have been developed and content validated. These items are recommended for their use in the assessment of physical, psychosocial and skill related fitness in children.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Kanu Goyal, Subhasish Chatterjee
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
