The Reliability and Validity of Toe Grip Strength as an Index of Physical Development in 4- to 5-Year-Old Children

摘要

Studies on TGS （toe-grip strength） are currently proliferating as a result of the development of the dynamometer. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the reliability and validity of TGS as a physical function in preschool aged children. The participants were 153 preschoolers. Each participant was measured in terms of his or her TGS and completed a MAT （motor ability test）. The reliability of the measurements was investigated via Pearson＇s r and Cronbach＇s a through a test-retest method, as well as a Bland-Altman plot. The validity of the TGS value was investigated by measuring the correlation between TGS and each component of the MAT, the principal component analysis, and a two-way layout ANOVA with general linear model （gender and age）. All reliability coefficients were more than 0.70. Though all components of the MAT relating to TGS were found to be significant （P 〈 0.05）, these correlations were weak. However, TGS was found to be a physical function that relating to the lower limbs and develops with aging. Therefore, TGS was found to be a highly reliable measure of physical function performance in preschoolers.