Recently, the Children’s Sport Participation and Physical Activity 2023 All-Ireland study found just 15% of Irish children engage in the recommended one hour per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity (PA). Thus, current research should seek to identify factors that motivate children and adolescents towards PA participation. Motor Competence (MC) is widely accepted as being a critical component that drives children towards developing and maintaining healthy lifestyles in both body and mind. MC consists of basic Fundamental Movements Skills and such skills are characterized as being the building blocks of more advanced, complex movements required to participate in games, sports or other context specific PA.
Currently, MC assessments are conducted by trained assessors in schools across Ireland, however, this is a time-consuming process. As such, a more streamlined approach to this assessment would facilitate a more efficient testing protocol enabling assessors to measure a higher quantity of children more accurately. With this consideration in mind the current study incorporates several Machine Learning classification models to examine an Irish MC dataset to assess the accuracy of various MC variables in predicting overall MC ability.
The current study’s results suggest that predictive modelling could be used to optimise national MC testing procedures, pinpointing variables with strong predictive power, thus removing the need for a wide-battery of assessments and reducing the heavy burden placed on assessors. Future work will look to build on this by incorporating additional data sources and focusing on the explainability of predictive models to enhance intervention protocols for Irish children.
Recent Comments