Measurement Challenges in Assessing Special Populations: Implications for Behavioral Research in Adapted Physical Activity

This article is a follow-up to a recent article by Marcel Bouffard (1997), "Using Old Research Ideas to Study Contemporary Problems in Adapted Physical Activity." In his article, Bouffard suggests that because of the extreme heterogeneity often found in adapted populations, adapted physical activity research would be better served utilizing an "individualized" approach to the generation of knowledge as opposed to the more traditional "group data" approach to research. The methodologies proposed by Bouffard require the intensive study of individuals, with replication of phenomena both within and across individuals within a specific population subset. A prerequisite to the intensive study of intra and interindividual behavior is the availability of appropriate assessment tools. The purpose of this article is to address special issues associated with assessing the wide performance variations often found in adapted and other special populations. Included in the article will be a discussion of measurement challenges associated with (a) high within-participant variability, (b) high between-participant variability, and (c) high variability with respect to individual performance goals.