Validity and reliability of Polar Team Pro GPS units for assessing maximum sprint speed in soccer players

Author(s):  
İsa Sagiroglu ◽  
Zeki Akyildiz ◽  
Mehmet Yildiz ◽  
Filipe Manuel Clemente

Previous research has reported inconsistencies in the validity and reliability of different brands of global positioning systems (GPS). Therefore, it should be questioned whether GPS units measure the maximum speed measurements validly and reliably. The current study aimed to analyze the validity and reliability of Polar Team Pro GPS units (10 Hz) when used to measure maximum sprint speed. Sixteen amateur soccer players (age: 27.22 ± 4.70 years; height: 177 ± 6.05 cm; body mass: 73.66 ± 5.63 kg) were tested in the 40 m sprint. Two Polar Team Pro GPS units were positioned on each player, while the radar was placed on a 1 m high tripod placed 10 m behind the starting point. The data obtained from the Polar Team Pro GPS units were compared to determine inter-unit reliability. The data obtained from one of the Polar Team Pro GPS units and radar gun (gold standard) were compared to determine validity. Good inter-unit reliability between the Polar Team Pro GPS units was reported for maximum sprint speed, with low coefficients of variation (5%–6%) and low smallest worthwhile changes (0.4 for all systems). Regarding validity, the coefficient of correlation was extremely high for maximum sprint speed ( r = 0.938, p < 0.001). Moreover, measurement differences between both systems were statistically insignificant (Mean Bias error = 0.144, R2 = 0.879, MAPE = 1.6%, MAE = 0.688, and RMSE = 0.697). Consequently, good reliability and perfect validity were observed, indicating that the Polar Team Pro GPS unit is suitable for maximum sprint speed measurements.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 11084
Author(s):  
José Hurtado-Avilés ◽  
Vicente J. León-Muñoz ◽  
Pilar Andújar-Ortuño ◽  
Fernando Santonja-Renedo ◽  
Mónica Collazo-Diéguez ◽  
...  

Axial vertebral rotation (AVR) and Cobb angles are the essential parameters to analyse different types of scoliosis, including adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. The literature shows significant discrepancies in the validity and reliability of AVR measurements taken in radiographic examinations, according to the type of vertebra. This study’s scope evaluated the validity and absolute reliability of thoracic and lumbar vertebrae AVR measurements, using a validated software based on Raimondi’s method in digital X-rays that allowed measurement with minor error when compared with other traditional, manual methods. Twelve independent evaluators measured AVR on the 74 most rotated vertebrae in 42 X-rays with the software on three separate occasions, with one-month intervals. We have obtained a gold standard for the AVR of vertebrae. The validity and reliability of the measurements of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae were studied separately. Measurements that were performed on lumbar vertebrae were shown to be 3.6 times more valid than those performed on thoracic, and with almost an equal reliability (1.38° ± 1.88° compared to −0.38° ± 1.83°). We can conclude that AVR measurements of the thoracic vertebrae show a more significant Mean Bias Error and a very similar reliability than those of the lumbar vertebrae.


2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Vellinga ◽  
Johannes H. Smit ◽  
Evert van Leeuwen ◽  
Willem van Tilburg ◽  
Cees Jonker

Objective: The main objective of this article is to evaluate and describe instruments for assessing decision-making capacity in psychiatry and psychogeriatrics, and to evaluate them for use in daily practice.Methods: The instruments were selected in Medline articles. We focus on the relationship between these instruments and the concept of competence, represented in the following elements: context in which an instrument is developed, disclosure of information, standards to assess decision-making capacity, the scale or threshold model, and validity and reliability.Results: The developmental context influences how information is provided and standards defined. Although it is not clear how decision-making capacity relates to competency judgments, most instruments provide good reliability.Conclusions: Comparison of the different instruments opens directions for future research. Although instruments can never replace a physician's judgment, they may provide a clear starting point for a discussion on competence. In daily practice assessments, attention should be given to information disclosure, the influence of our own normative values in evaluating standards of decision-making capacity, and the relation between decision-making capacity and competence.


Nutrients ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Begley ◽  
Ellen Paynter ◽  
Satvinder Dhaliwal

Food literacy is described as the behaviours involved in planning, purchasing, preparing, and eating food and is critical for achieving healthy dietary intakes. Food literacy programs require valid and reliable evaluation measures. The aim of this paper is to describe the development and validation of a self-administered questionnaire to measure food literacy behaviours targeted by the Food Sensations® for Adults program in Western Australia. Validity and reliability tests were applied to questionnaire item development commencing with (a) a deductive approach using Australian empirical evidence on food literacy as a construct along with its components and (b) adapting an extensively-tested food behaviour checklist to generate a pool of items for investigation. Then, an iterative process was applied to develop a specific food literacy behaviour checklist for program evaluation including exploratory factor analysis. Content, face, and construct validity resulted in a 14-item food behaviour checklist. Three factors entitled Plan & Manage, Selection, and Preparation were evident, resulting in Cronbach’s alpha 0.79, 0.76, and 0.81, respectively, indicating good reliability of each of these factors. This research has produced a validated questionnaire, is a useful starting point for other food literacy programs, and has applications globally.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (23) ◽  
pp. 2639-2644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Aquino ◽  
Bruno Melli-Neto ◽  
João Victor S. Ferrari ◽  
Bruno L. S. Bedo ◽  
Luiz H. Palucci Vieira ◽  
...  

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 281
Author(s):  
Stuart L. Joy ◽  
José L. Chávez

Eddy covariance (EC) systems are being used to measure sensible heat (H) and latent heat (LE) fluxes in order to determine crop water use or evapotranspiration (ET). The reliability of EC measurements depends on meeting certain meteorological assumptions; the most important of such are horizontal homogeneity, stationarity, and non-advective conditions. Over heterogeneous surfaces, the spatial context of the measurement must be known in order to properly interpret the magnitude of the heat flux measurement results. Over the past decades, there has been a proliferation of ‘heat flux source area’ (i.e., footprint) modeling studies, but only a few have explored the accuracy of the models over heterogeneous agricultural land. A composite ET estimate was created by using the estimated footprint weights for an EC system in the upwind corner of four fields and separate ET estimates from each of these fields. Three analytical footprint models were evaluated by comparing the composite ET to the measured ET. All three models performed consistently well, with an average mean bias error (MBE) of about −0.03 mm h−1 (−4.4%) and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.09 mm h−1 (10.9%). The same three footprint models were then used to adjust the EC-measured ET to account for the fraction of the footprint that extended beyond the field of interest. The effectiveness of the footprint adjustment was determined by comparing the adjusted ET estimates with the lysimetric ET measurements from within the same field. This correction decreased the absolute hourly ET MBE by 8%, and the RMSE by 1%.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 2996
Author(s):  
Qinwei Zhang ◽  
Mingqi Li ◽  
Maohua Wang ◽  
Arthur Paul Mizzi ◽  
Yongjian Huang ◽  
...  

High spatial resolution carbon dioxide (CO2) flux inversion systems are needed to support the global stocktake required by the Paris Agreement and to complement the bottom-up emission inventories. Based on the work of Zhang, a regional CO2 flux inversion system capable of assimilating the column-averaged dry air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) retrieved from Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) observations had been developed. To evaluate the system, under the constraints of the initial state and boundary conditions extracted from the CarbonTracker 2017 product (CT2017), the annual CO2 flux over the contiguous United States in 2016 was inverted (1.08 Pg C yr−1) and compared with the corresponding posterior CO2 fluxes extracted from OCO-2 model intercomparison project (OCO-2 MIP) (mean: 0.76 Pg C yr−1, standard deviation: 0.29 Pg C yr−1, 9 models in total) and CT2017 (1.19 Pg C yr−1). The uncertainty of the inverted CO2 flux was reduced by 14.71% compared to the prior flux. The annual mean XCO2 estimated by the inversion system was 403.67 ppm, which was 0.11 ppm smaller than the result (403.78 ppm) simulated by a parallel experiment without assimilating the OCO-2 retrievals and closer to the result of CT2017 (403.29 ppm). Independent CO2 flux and concentration measurements from towers, aircraft, and Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) were used to evaluate the results. Mean bias error (MBE) between the inverted CO2 flux and flux measurements was 0.73 g C m−2 d−1, was reduced by 22.34% and 28.43% compared to those of the prior flux and CT2017, respectively. MBEs between the CO2 concentrations estimated by the inversion system and concentration measurements from TCCON, towers, and aircraft were reduced by 52.78%, 96.45%, and 75%, respectively, compared to those of the parallel experiment. The experiment proved that CO2 emission hotspots indicated by the inverted annual CO2 flux with a relatively high spatial resolution of 50 km consisted well with the locations of most major metropolitan/urban areas in the contiguous United States, which demonstrated the potential of combing satellite observations with high spatial resolution CO2 flux inversion system in supporting the global stocktake.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2121
Author(s):  
Changsuk Lee ◽  
Kyunghwa Lee ◽  
Sangmin Kim ◽  
Jinhyeok Yu ◽  
Seungtaek Jeong ◽  
...  

This study proposes an improved approach for monitoring the spatial concentrations of hourly particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) via a deep neural network (DNN) using geostationary ocean color imager (GOCI) images and unified model (UM) reanalysis data over the Korean Peninsula. The DNN performance was optimized to determine the appropriate training model structures, incorporating hyperparameter tuning, regularization, early stopping, and input and output variable normalization to prevent training dataset overfitting. Near-surface atmospheric information from the UM was also used as an input variable to spatially generalize the DNN model. The retrieved PM2.5 from the DNN was compared with estimates from random forest, multiple linear regression, and the Community Multiscale Air Quality model. The DNN demonstrated the highest accuracy compared to that of the conventional methods for the hold-out validation (root mean square error (RMSE) = 7.042 μg/m3, mean bias error (MBE) = −0.340 μg/m3, and coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.698) and the cross-validation (RMSE = 9.166 μg/m3, MBE = 0.293 μg/m3, and R2 = 0.49). Although the R2 was low due to underestimated high PM2.5 concentration patterns, the RMSE and MBE demonstrated reliable accuracy values (<10 μg/m3 and 1 μg/m3, respectively) for the hold-out validation and cross-validation.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1207
Author(s):  
Gonçalo C. Rodrigues ◽  
Ricardo P. Braga

This study aims to evaluate NASA POWER reanalysis products for daily surface maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin) temperatures, solar radiation (Rs), relative humidity (RH) and wind speed (Ws) when compared with observed data from 14 distributed weather stations across Alentejo Region, Southern Portugal, with a hot summer Mediterranean climate. Results showed that there is good agreement between NASA POWER reanalysis and observed data for all parameters, except for wind speed, with coefficient of determination (R2) higher than 0.82, with normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) varying, from 8 to 20%, and a normalized mean bias error (NMBE) ranging from –9 to 26%, for those variables. Based on these results, and in order to improve the accuracy of the NASA POWER dataset, two bias corrections were performed to all weather variables: one for the Alentejo Region as a whole; another, for each location individually. Results improved significantly, especially when a local bias correction is performed, with Tmax and Tmin presenting an improvement of the mean NRMSE of 6.6 °C (from 8.0 °C) and 16.1 °C (from 20.5 °C), respectively, while a mean NMBE decreased from 10.65 to 0.2%. Rs results also show a very high goodness of fit with a mean NRMSE of 11.2% and mean NMBE equal to 0.1%. Additionally, bias corrected RH data performed acceptably with an NRMSE lower than 12.1% and an NMBE below 2.1%. However, even when a bias correction is performed, Ws lacks the performance showed by the remaining weather variables, with an NRMSE never lower than 19.6%. Results show that NASA POWER can be useful for the generation of weather data sets where ground weather stations data is of missing or unavailable.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martín Martínez ◽  
Elkin O. Luis ◽  
Edwin Yair Oliveros ◽  
Pablo Fernández-Berrocal ◽  
Ainize Sarrionandia ◽  
...  

Abstract Background In a context where there is no treatment for the current COVID-19 virus, the combination of self-care behaviours together with confinement, are strategies to decrease the risk of contagion and remain healthy. However, there are no self-care measures to screen self-care activities in general population and which, could be briefly in a lockdown situation. This research aims to build and validate a psychometric tool to screen self-care activities in general population. Methods Firstly, an exploratory factor analysis was performed in a sample of 226 participants to discover the underlying factorial structure and to reduce the number of items in the original tool into a significant pool of items related to self-care. Later a confirmatory factor analyses were performed in a new sample of 261 participants to test for the fit and goodness of factor solutions. Internal validity, reliability, and convergent validity between its score with perceived stress and psychological well-being measures were examined on this sample. Results The exploratory analyses suggested a four-factor solution, corresponding to health consciousness, nutrition and physical activity, sleep, and intra-personal and inter-personal coping skills (14 items). Then, the four-factor structure was confirmed as the best model fit for self-care activities. The tool demonstrated good reliability, predictive validity of individuals’ perception of coping with COVID-19 lockdown, and convergent validity with well-being and perceived stress. Conclusions This screening tool could be helpful to address future evaluations and interventions to promote healthy behaviours. Likewise, this tool can be targeted to specific population self-care’s needs during a scalable situation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1420326X2110130
Author(s):  
Manta Marcelinus Dakyen ◽  
Mustafa Dagbasi ◽  
Murat Özdenefe

Ambitious energy efficiency goals constitute an important roadmap towards attaining a low-carbon society. Thus, various building-related stakeholders have introduced regulations targeting the energy efficiency of buildings. However, some countries still lack such policies. This paper is an effort to help bridge this gap for Northern Cyprus, a country devoid of building energy regulations that still experiences electrical energy production and distribution challenges, principally by establishing reference residential buildings which can be the cornerstone for prospective building regulations. Statistical analysis of available building stock data was performed to determine existing residential reference buildings. Five residential reference buildings with distinct configurations that constituted over 75% floor area share of the sampled data emerged, with floor areas varying from 191 to 1006 m2. EnergyPlus models were developed and calibrated for five residential reference buildings against yearly measured electricity consumption. Values of Mean Bias Error (MBE) and Cumulative Variation of Root Mean Squared Error CV(RMSE) between the models’ energy consumption and real energy consumption on monthly based analysis varied within the following ranges: (MBE)monthly from –0.12% to 2.01% and CV(RMSE)monthly from 1.35% to 2.96%. Thermal energy required to maintain the models' setpoint temperatures for cooling and heating varied from 6,134 to 11,451 kWh/year.


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