OBJECTIVE: To establish normative values for a functional capacity evaluation (FCE) of healthy working subjects.DESIGN: Descriptive.SETTING: Rehabilitation center.PARTICIPANTS: Healthy working subjects (N=701; 448 men, 253 women) between 20 and 60 years of age, working in more than 180 occupations.INTERVENTIONS: Subjects performed a 2-hour FCE consisting of 12 work-related tests. Subjects were classified into categories based on physical demands according to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Means, ranges, SDs, and percentiles were provided for normative values of FCE, and a regression analysis for outcome of the 12 tests was performed.RESULTS: Normative FCE values were established for 4 physical demand categories.CONCLUSIONS: The normative values enable comparison of patients' performances to these values. If a patient's performance exceeds the lowest scores in his/her corresponding demand category, then the patient's capacity is very likely to be sufficient to meet the workload. Further, clinicians can make more precise return-to-work recommendations and set goals for rehabilitation programs. A comparison of the normative values can be useful to the fields of rehabilitation, occupational, and insurance medicine. Further research is needed to test the validity of the normative values with respect to workplace assessments and return-to-work recommendations.
DOCUMENT
Background. Recent research has shown that the Fitkids Treadmill Test (FTT) is a valid and reproducible exercise test for the assessment of aerobic exercise capacity in children and adolescents who are healthy. Objective. The study objective was to provide sex- and age-related normative values for FTT performance in children and adolescents who were healthy, developing typically, and 6 to 18 years of age. Design. This was a cross-sectional, observational study. Methods. Three hundred fifty-six children and adolescents who were healthy (174 boys and 182 girls; mean age12.9 years, SD3.7) performed the FTT to their maximal effort to assess time to exhaustion (TTE). The least-mean-square method was used to generate sex- and age-related centile charts (P3, P10, P25, P50, P75, P90, and P97) for TTE on the FTT. Results. In boys, the reference curve (P50) showed an almost linear increase in TTE with age, from 8.8 minutes at 6 years of age to 16.1 minutes at 18 years of age. In girls, the P50 values for TTE increased from 8.8 minutes at 6 years of age to 12.5 minutes at 18 years of age, with a plateau in TTE starting at approximately 10 years of age. Limitations. Youth who were not white were underrepresented in this study. Conclusions. This study describes sex- and age-related normative values for FTT performance in children and adolescents who were healthy, developing typically, and 6 to 18 years of age. These age- and sex-related normative values will increase the usefulness of the FTT in clinical practice.
DOCUMENT
It has been established that normative social influence can be used effec-tively in persuasive technology. However, it is unknown whether the application of more social pressure makes it more effective. To test this hypothesis, a quantitative experiment was conducted on the online social network Facebook. Although evidence to support the hypothesis was found, it cannot be concluded from this experiment that more intense persuasion is more effective, when utilizing normative social influence in persuasive technology.
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Although cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is being recognized as an important marker of health and functioning, it is currently not routinely assessed in daily clinical practice. There is an urgent need for a simple and feasible exercise test that can validly and reliably estimate an individual’s CRF. The Steep Ramp Test (SRT) is such a practical short-time exercise test (work rate increments of 25 W/10 seconds, so the test phase will only take up to 4 minutes) on a cycle ergometer, that does not require expensive equipment or specialized knowledge, and has been found able to validly and reliably estimate an individual’s CRF. Although the SRT is already frequently used in the Netherlands to evaluate CRF, sex- and age-specific reference values for adults and elderly are lacking thus far, which seriously limits the interpretation of test results.
