Development, reliability and performance level discriminative validity of a new badminton-specific reactive agility test

Purpose: The main aim of this study was to develop a reliable and ecologically valid badminton-specific reactive agility testthat would provide researchers and practitioners with an easy-to-use instrument to assess both the motor and cognitiveaspects of agility performance.Methods: Sample of N=41 young badminton players (age 15.72 ± 1.11 yrs) from different performance levels (High (N1=12),Average (N2=14), Low (N3=15) was subjected to the newly developed badminton-specific reactive agility test (BSARAT) andfour tests that had previously proven to be reliable and valid in badminton practice.Results: The newly constructed badminton-specific “Reactive Agility Test” (BSARAT) showed a very high internal consistencybetween trials (Cronbach’s alpha α= .97) and a high repeatability of the results (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient ICC=.877). The factor analysis showed high correlation with the same latent dimension extracted from established genericand badminton-specific agility tests (factor structure coefficient = -.94), clearly indicating adequate construct validity.Furthermore, the between-subjects ANOVA revealed successful main effect for performance level (significance P< .001;(partial) eta squared (ηp2= .29). The post-hoc analysis with Bonferroni correction showed significant pairwise differencesbetween the groups of High and Low performance levels, as was the case for all tests in the test battery.Conclusions: To summarise, the BSARAT is a reliable, ecologically valid and easy-to-use badminton-specific test that has thepotential to become a more feasible and practical alternative to existing reactive agility tests.