Affiliation:
1. Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Manisa Celal Bayar University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Manisa, Turkey
2. Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Izmir Katip Celebi University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Izmir, Turkey
Abstract
A reliable, versatile means of assessing visuo-motor reaction time (V-MRT) is important to football (soccer) players for many reasons, including the fact that faster V-MRT is a critical sport skill that may even play a role in reducing common sports injuries to the lower muscle extremities that can be associated with lost time on the field. We aimed to determine the test-retest reliability and minimum detectable change (MDC) of the Brain Pro System for assessing lower-extremity V-MRT in young male football players. We had 68 participants ( M age = 16.35, SD = 1.71 years) perform two assessment sessions one-week apart. For test-retest reliability, we calculated a one-way intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) at the 95% confidence interval and provided the standard error of measurement (SEM) and minimum detectable change (MDC) (MDC = SEM × 1.96 × √2) for V-MRTs. We obtained excellent V-MRT test-retest reliability for dominant lower-extremity, non-dominant lower-extremity, and dominant and non-dominant lower-extremities (ICC2,1 = .93, 95%CI = .89–.96; ICC2,1 = .94, 95%CI = .91–.96; ICC2,1 = .96, 95%CI = .94–.97; respectively). The calculated MDC for the dominant lower-extremity V-MRT, the non-dominant lower-extremity V-MRT, and dominant and non-dominant lower-extremities (random) V-MRT were 1.21 seconds, 1.13 seconds, and 1.21 seconds, respectively. Brain Pro System had excellent reliability for assessing lower-extremity V-MRT in young male football players. The MDC values at the 95% confidence level (MDC95) we obtained were reliable for assessing clinically meaningful V-MRT changes.