POLYGON - A New Fundamental Movement Skills Test for 8 Year Old Children: Construction and Validation.

Inadequately adopted fundamental movement skills (FMS) in early childhood may have a negative impact on the motor performance in later life (Gallahue and Ozmun, 2005). The need for an efficient FMS testing in Physical Education was recognized. The aim of this paper was to construct and validate a new FMS test for 8 year old children. Ninety-five 8 year old children were used for the testing. A total of 24 new FMS tasks were constructed and only the best representatives of movement areas entered into the final test product - FMS-POLYGON. The ICC showed high values for all 24 tasks (0.83-0.97) and the factorial analysis revealed the best representatives of each movement area that entered the FMS-POLYGON: tossing and catching the volleyball against a wall, running across obstacles, carrying the medicine balls, and straight running. The ICC for the FMS-POLYGON showed a very high result (0.98) and, therefore, confirmed the test's intra-rater reliability. Concurrent validity was tested with the use of the "Test of Gross Motor Development" (TGMD-2). Correlation analysis between the newly constructed FMS-POLYGON and the TGMD-2 revealed the coefficient of -0.82 which indicates a high correlation. In conclusion, the new test for FMS assessment proved to be a reliable and valid instrument for 8 year old children. Application of this test in schools is justified and could play an important factor in physical education and sport practice. Key pointsAll 21 newly constructed tasks demonstrated high intra-rater reliability (0.83-0.97) in FMS assessment. High reliability was also noted in the FMS-POLYGON test (0.98).A high correlation was found between the FMS-POLYGON and TGMD-2 which is a confirmation of the new test's concurrent validity.The research resolved the problem of long and detailed FMS assessment by adding a new dimension using quick and effective norm-referenced approach but also covering all the most important movement areas.New and validated test can be of great use primarily in school practice for physical education teachers and FMS experts.