A tool for assessing the horizontal dribble and jumping throw in young handball players

BACKGROUND: Validated tests for the quality of movement patterns are important to help teachers to assess and induce positive performance changes. However, few tests are available for handball sport skills. AIM: Therefore, we developed and validated a checklist to assess dribbling with a jumping throw. METHOD: First, three handball experts were invited to verify if the checklist which contained all the components that describe the skills, and the logical validity process. Then, fifty participants, aged 8 -12 years old, performed the skill of dribbling with a horizontal jumping throw, fifteen of them were re-tested one week apart. Two raters were also selected to conduct an intra- and inter-rater objectivity assessment. McNemar tests were used to compare the proportion of proficient and non-proficient performance between raters. Cohen’s k tests were used to test the intra and inter-rater objectivity. The intra-class correlation coefficient was used to estimated reliability (test-retest). RESULTS: The results confirmed that the checklist contained the necessary criteria to characterize the skill and to discriminate children with different proficiency levels. Moderate-to-high inter-and intra-rater agreements were found. Children's performance pre and post-test were highly reliable. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the proposed checklist can reliably analyze the movement pattern of the dribbling with horizontal jumping throw – which can be highly useful for teachers and sports coaches.