Abstract
Indian women often report premature exhaustion in the lower limb while performing the Harvard step test (HST) for measurement of physical fitness index (PFI) whereas they can easily perform the Queen's college step test (QCT). 155 sedentary females of 19-24 years were selected for the study from Institute of Dental Sciences, UP, India to evaluate the applicability of QCT as an alternative of HST. They were divided into study group (n=100) and confirmatory group (n=55). All subjects performed QCT comfortably but 35 (20 from study group and 15 from confirmatory group) of them could not properly perform the HST due to premature fatigue in their legs and therefore these 35 subjects were discarded from the study. Existence of significant correlation (r =-0.90, P <0.001) between PFI and QCT heart rate depicted the following prediction norm for PFI from QCT heart rate : Y=195.06-3.09 X (SEE=3.09). Prediction of PFI by this norm in the confirmatory group showed insignificant variation with the directly measured value from the HST. Bland and Altman's analysis also indicated that QCT norm predicts the PFI with 95% confidence interval. Moreover, QCT is easy to perform and the derived norm from QCT predicted the PFI score with substantially small standard error of estimate. Therefore, QCT is recommended as a valid and authentic test for evaluating PFI in young sedentary females of Uttar Pradesh, India.
