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| Feature | No.65 October 2013 |

Understanding the Physical Literacy Journey of Children: the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy

Patricia E. Longmuir

Abstract

The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy is a multi-faceted assessment protocol that enhances our understanding of the physical literacy journey among children 8 to 12 years of age. The child’s capacity is assessed within physical competence, motivation and confidence, knowledge and understanding, and daily behavior domains to provide a comprehensive description of the child’s capacity for a healthy, active lifestyle. The feasibility, validity and reliability of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy have been established through 6 cycles of data collection with almost 2,000 children. Protocols and resources for administering the assessment are available at www.haloresearch.ca.

Understanding the Physical Literacy Journey of Children: The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy

The Need to Enhance Physical Literacy

The concept of physical literacy encompasses the knowledge, skills, and motivation that an individual utilizes to support a physically active lifestyle across the lifespan(Whitehead, 2010; Lloyd et al., 2010). As such, physical literacy can be viewed as a journey that continues throughout the life of each individual. On a daily basis, an individual’s physical literacy will vary, reflecting a constellation of factors, such as growth, maturation, education, personal choice and life experience. Given the rapid pace of change in early life, childhood would seem to be a critically important time to foster positive changes in physical literacy.

A growing body of evidence suggests that most children today are struggling to achieve optimal levels of physical literacy. Among children of school age, only a small minority achieve the minimum amount of daily physical activity recommended for optimal health(Colley et al., 2012). Physical activity declines with increasing age(Bar-Or & Rowland, 2004), in some reports as early as 3 years of age(Taylor et al., 2009), with the decline occurring much more rapidly among females(Thompson et al., 2003). The physical fitness of children is also in decline(Tremblay et al., 2010), while the burden of non-communicable diseases associated with sedentary lifestyles increase(United Nations General Assembly, 2011).

Promoting the positive development of physical literacy is dependent on the ability to accurately and reliably assess physical literacy throughout the life journey. As a multi-faceted concept, physical literacy interventions can be focused across a very wide spectrum. Most commonly to date, interventions have focused on measuring and then increasing only one component of physical literacy, such as physical fitness(Kriemler et al., 2011), motor skill(Goodway & Branta, 2003; Logan et al., 2012) or physical activity behaviour(Van Sluijs et al., 2007; Kriemler et al., 2011). Results achieved from this approach have been decidedly mixed(Task Force on Community Preventive Services, 2001), with no single strategy identified that can consistently provide positive results across different settings and populations.

Physical Literacy Assessment as the First Step

Interventions to enhance physical literacy would be most effective if they could be targeted to areas of deficit or factors needing additional support. For example, there are many more avenues for increasing physical activity among sedentary individuals than among their highly active counterparts. Similarly, efforts to enhance physical literacy through improvements in motor skill would be expected to have relatively little impact on individuals who are already highly skilled. Thus, the ability to assess is fundamental to both the design and evaluation of intervention efforts to enhance physical literacy.

Assessment is foundational to many fields, including health and education (Lloyd, Colley Tremblay 2010). Assessments can identify aspects of the physical literacy journey that are currently sub-optimal, and measure changes in physical literacy over time. However, the multi-faceted nature of physical literacy makes assessment a complex undertaking. An initial model for the assessment of physical literacy in children 8 to 12 years of age was proposed by Lloyd and colleagues (2010). They proposed that physical literacy be assessed via four interacting core domains: physical fitness, motor behaviour, physical activity behaviour, and psycho-social/cognitive factors (Figure 1). A high level of physical literacy would be reflected by the child’s ability to apply their skills across multiple contexts, such as land, water, ice and air (Lloyd et al, 2010). Others have prioritized similar concepts as playing a key role in physical literacy, but have also emphasized the importance of factors relating to motivation and confidence(Whitehead, 2010; American Academy of Pediatrics, 2000).

Identifying the facets of physical literacy to be included is a first, but not the only step required to develop an effective assessment protocol. Once developed, the feasibility, validity and reliability of the assessment must also be verified. Validity represents the accuracy of the assessment – do the assessment tasks actually measure the intended facets of physical literacy. Reliability addresses the ability of the assessment to provide similar results under different conditions, such as when the assessment is implemented by a different examiner or if the assessment is completed on a different day or time. While valid and reliable assessments of physical literacy components (e.g., physical fitness, motor skill) have been in use for decades, a comprehensive assessment that would encompass all of the key domains within physical literacy is essential to enhancing our understanding of the physical literacy deficits that influence the increasingly sedentary lifestyles(Troiano et al., 2008; Colley et al., 2011) of children.

The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL)

The Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (CAPL) was developed as a measure of the physical literacy of children 8 to 12 years of age. It encompasses multiple assessment procedures within four overlapping domains: daily behaviour, physical competence, motivation and confidence, and knowledge and understanding (Appendix 1). Physical competence, which is comprised of health-related physical fitness and fundamental motor skills, motivation and confidence, and knowledge and understanding are the overlapping domains at the core of the model. Daily behaviour is a more global concept that encompasses and interacts with the core domains; it both influences these domains and is influenced by them.

The development of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (www.haloresearch.ca) occurred over 6 research cycles that were completed between 2009 and 2013. In total, components of the CAPL have been completed by approximately 2,000 children ranging from 6 to 15 years of age (Appendix 2). During the final phase, complete CAPL data were collected on 715 children (57% female) in grades 4, 5 and 6 (mean age = 10 ± 1 year; range 8 to 12).

The CAPL is distinguished from other methods of evaluating physical literacy by the research documentation of the CAPL protocol development and evaluation. The feasibility, validity and reliability of the CAPL protocols when administered by research staff to children in grades 4, 5 and 6 have been established(Longmuir et al., 2013). The validity of the CAPL assessment results for these students, within each domain, have been established relative to physical literacy ratings provided by teachers. The validity of the CAPL model of physical literacy assessment was established through a Delphi expert review process(Francis et al., 2013). The reliability of the assessment protocols has been established between different examiners, within each examiner, and for assessments conducted over short (4 days or less) or longer (8 days or more) intervals(Longmuir et al., 2013). Thus, researchers and practitioners can be confident that the CAPL assessment results will accurately identify a child’s current level of physical literacy.

The CAPL is a multi-faceted assessment that incorporates multiple measures within each domain (Appendix 3). In calculating an overall physical literacy “score”, the domains of daily behaviour and physical competence are weighted more heavily than the domains of motivation and confidence or knowledge and understanding. This differential weighting was recommended through a Delphi expert review process(Francis et al., 2013), primarily based on the rationale that the daily behaviour and physical competence domains rely primarily on objective measures of performance. In contrast, the motivation and confidence and knowledge and understanding domains rely on the child’s self-reports of their feelings, perceptions, knowledge and understanding. It was the opinion of the Delphi experts that the factors that cannot be directly observed, and may be more prone to reporting bias, should receive less weight when calculating the total physical literacy score.

The CAPL was developed with the intention of providing researchers and practitioners with an accurate and reliable assessment of a child’s physical literacy. Now that development of the assessment protocols has been completed, detailed instructions (manual and videos) for conducting the CAPL are available, at no cost, on the web site of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute (www.haloresearch.ca).

Within the CAPL, daily behaviour is assessed primarily through pedometer step counts of daily activity measured over one week. Self-reported screen time and sleep behaviour are also incorporated into the daily behaviour domain score.

The physical competence domain incorporates measures of health-related physical fitness and fundamental motor skill. Health related fitness evaluates aerobic endurance (PACER shuttle run (Scott et al., 2013)), muscular strength (grip strength (Tremblay et al., 2010)), muscular endurance (plank hold (Boyer et al., 2013b)), flexibility (sit and reach (Tremblay et al., 2010)), and body composition (height, weight, waist circumference (Tremblay et al., 2010)). Fundamental motor skills are evaluated through the completion of an obstacle course, with both the quality of each skill and the overall time for course completion contributing to the assessment. The obstacle course enables the evaluation of skill performance in a dynamic format that is more similar to childhood physical activity with peers than more traditional motor skill assessments that evaluate each skill in isolation(Boyer et al., 2013a).

The motivation and confidence domain assesses the child’s self-perceived adequacy and predilection for physical activity (CSAPPA sub-scales (Hay, 1992)). It also asks children to report on the perceived benefits of physical activity, the importance of barriers to physical activity, and their skill and activity levels compared to their peers(Garcia et al., 1995). The assessment of knowledge and understanding was grounded in Canadian curricula for physical and health education. A series of questions assess the child’s knowledge of recommendations for daily activity and screen time, appropriate use of safety gear during participation and effective methods of enhancing skill and fitness. The child’s understanding of the meaning of key concepts, including cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength and endurance and health, are also evaluated. The child’s understanding of the application of these concepts in daily life is evaluated through the completion of a short paragraph about physical activity, exercise and fitness. Finally, children are asked to indicate their preferred leisure time activity from a list of active and sedentary pursuits (manuscript on the development and testing of the knowledge assessment is in preparation).

Future Directions

The availability of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy provides researchers and practitioners with a reliable and valid assessment of a child’s physical literacy journey at a particular point in time. Considering the child’s performance on each assessment task, and combining individual items to calculate domain scores for daily behaviour, physical competence, motivation and confidence, and knowledge and understanding will provide a snapshot of the child’s physical literacy strengths and weaknesses. Thus, assessment results may be used by practitioners as the foundation for education or training sessions to enhance physical literacy. Sequential assessments can be used to evaluate the impact of education/training on specific aspects of physical literacy or the child’s overall performance across multiple domains. Ultimately, such evaluations combined with revisions to the education/training sessions will lead to greater intervention effectiveness and enhanced childhood physical literacy.

Although the availability of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy represents a substantial step forward in our ability to monitor the physical literacy journey during childhood, much remains to be done. The feasibility, validity and reliability of the CAPL has been established only in children from 8 to 12 years of age. Preliminary data collection indicates that the CAPL may also be suitable for children as young as 6 years of age or as old as 15 years, but refinements are likely required in order to optimize the assessment across this broader age range. Specifically, the assessment of knowledge and understanding needs to be adjusted to suit the expected knowledge at each age. The format for administering the motivation and confidence and knowledge and understanding assessments (currently done via questionnaire) will need to be revised for use with children who do not yet read. The obstacle course motor skill assessment is also likely to require revision to suit the more advanced skills required for continued involvement in physical activity with peers during adolescence.

Currently, research is being completed to build on the CAPL materials available to date. One project is evaluating the CAPL manual and training videos to determine their effectiveness in enabling researchers and practitioners to accurately implement the CAPL protocols and effectively interpret the results obtained. A second project is developing a physical literacy screening assessment. The goal is to enable leaders without specialist training in physical literacy assessment to easily and quickly identify those children who are in greatest need of additional physical literacy support. Partnerships with leaders in the recreation, education, allied health, coaching and healthcare sectors will ensure that the physical literacy screening assessment has broad applicability so that the benefits of physical literacy education/training can be provided to all children, including those who are not currently engaged in traditional sport or recreation programmes.

Acknowledgements

We wish to extend our gratitude to all of the children, and their parents, who have made the development of the CAPL a reality. We also very much appreciate the contributions of our research staff and students who enabled us to recruit children during each phase of this project, and who assisted with data collection and analyses. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the support of the many funding agencies who have made this work possible (complete list available at www.haloresearch.ca) .

References

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Contact

Pat Longmuir
Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute
Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group
401 Smyth Road, RI#1-214
Ottawa
Ontario, K1H 8L1
Canada
Email: plongmuir@cheo.on.ca

http://www.icsspe.org/