Reliability of hand held stopwatches during H.A.R.T. field testing

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability of split times obtained by band held stopwatches (HHS) compared to electronic timing (ET) during a 200-m sprint. Twenty-six timers were given instruction and practice until good agreement was achieved between ET and HHS. Two HHS timing methods were compared with ET: single-split timers (SST) and multiple-split timers (MST). Trained runners (8 males, 10 females) participated in this study. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to determine the validity. Reliability was analyzed using Intraclass Correlation models. No differences were found between the five MST (p = 0.092). An ICC of 0.92 indicated high reliability. ET resulted in significantly faster times than MST or SST (F = 4.73,p = 0.009). High ICC values (ICC model (2, 3) = 0.96 and 0.99) indicated that the two HHS methods were reliable. It was concluded that ET should be the method of choice.