Validity and Reliability of New Agility Test among Elite and Subelite under 14-Soccer Players

BACKGROUND: Agility is a determinant component in soccer performance. This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and sensitivity of a “Modified Illinois change of direction test” (MICODT) in ninety-five U-14 soccer players. METHODS: A total of 95 U-14 soccer players (mean ± SD: age: 13.61±1.04 years; body mass: 30.52±4.54 kg; height: 1.57±0.1 m) from a professional and semi-professional soccer academy, participated to this study. Sixty of them took part in reliability analysis and thirty-two in sensitivity analysis. RESULTS: The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) that aims to assess relative reliability of the MICODT was of 0.99, and its standard error of measurement (SEM) for absolute reliability was <5% (1.24%). The MICODT’s capacity to detect change is “good”, it’s SEM (0.10 s) was ≤ SWC (0.33 s). The MICODT is significantly correlated to the Illinois change of direction speed test (ICODT) (r = 0.77; p<0.0001). The ICODT’s MDC(95) (0.64 s) was twice about the MICODT’s MDC(95) (0.28 s), indicating that MICODT presents better ability to detect true changes than ICODT. The MICODT provided good sensitivity since elite U-14 soccer players were better than non-elite one on MICODT (p = 0.005; d(z) = 1.01 [large]). This was supported by an area under the ROC curve of 0.77 (CI 95%, 0.59 to 0.89, p<0.0008). The difference observed in these two groups in ICODT was not statistically significant (p = 0.14; d(z) = 0.51 [small]), showing poor discriminant ability. CONCLUSION: MICODT can be considered as more suitable protocol for assessing agility performance level than ICODT in U-14 soccer players.