Covid Pandemic Effects on the Physical Fitness of Primary School Children: Results of the German EMOTIKON Project

Sports Medicine - Open

Table 5 Covid-19 pandemic effects expressed in different effect size measures

	Endurance	Coordination	Speed	PowerLOW	PowerUP	Balance
Cohen’s d (fixed effect estimate)	− 0.08	− 0.15	− 0.03	+ 0.02	− 0.08	+ 0.08
Covid pandemic effect (2016–2019 versus 2020–2022) in test metric	− 11.7 m	− 0.038 m/s	− 0.009 m/s	+ 0.5 cm	− 0.06 m	+ 0.07 log(s)
Smallest meaningful change (SMC)	− 31.4 m	− 0.059 m/s	− 0.086 m/s	+ 3.9 cm	− 0.15 m	+ 0.18 log(s)
Developmental costs/gains during the Covid pandemic (i.e., 2020–2022) relative to 1-year development*	− 5 mth	− 3 mth	− 1 mth	+ 1 mth	− 2 mth	+ 7 mth

Covid-19 pandemic effects = Comparison of cohorts 2016–2019 with cohorts 2020–2022. As test scores were transformed to z-scores, the LMM estimates indicate changes in performance in units of SD. Fixed effect estimates from the LMM can thus be interpreted as Cohen’s d. Endurance = cardiorespiratory endurance (i.e., 6-min run test), Coordination = star-run test, Speed = 20-m linear sprint test, PowerLOW = lower limbs muscle power (i.e., standing long jump test). PowerUP = upper limbs muscle power (i.e., ball-push test), balance = static balance (i.e., one-legged-stance test with eyes closed), mth = months
*Covid pandemic effect relative to longitudinal age effect from LMMs based on test scores from 1,013 keyage children tested in third and one year later in fourth grade [34]