How reliable are pre-swimming skill assessments in relevant peer groups?

The following stages may be processed during learning-to-swim: 1) following a general familiarization to water, 2) five basic aquatic skills (i.e. fully submerge, learn a rhythmic and steady breathing pattern with the added pressure of water, be able to float prone and supine using buoyancy, glide with reduced drag, and dive safely into the water) have to be mastered before 3) basic aquatic locomotion is possible and 4) swimming styles can be learned. Water familiarization and the five basic aquatic skills are prerequisite skills to move independently in the water. While there are different ways quantifying performance in swimming (e.g. time tracking, measurement of energetics, biomechanical analyses), evaluating pre-swimming skills solely refers to the teachers’ or coaches’ experience and gut instinct. Therefore, this study aimed to develop an easy to apply assessment tool that quantifies the evaluation of pre-swimming skills to help estimating the stages of development in (pre)school children. 20 consecutive and in level of difficulty increasing tasks, according to physical in-water characteristics, were developed to capture basic aquatic skills. Each task was characterised by specific criteria. Criteria may be failed or passed. As participants 22 children (6.95 ± 1.03 years, male n = 12, female n = 10) covering the full range of task-difficulty were recruited to perform the developed tasks. Performances were video recorded from standardized frontal (above and under surface) and sideways perspectives. Next, video sequences together with standardized evaluation sheets were sent to four rating groups. A total number of 1.082 participated in the survey. Peers comprised different levels of experience in accordance to learning how to swim: swimming coaches, physical education teachers (elementary schools), and parents with children in the respective age group but no particular swimming or teaching history. Using the rating groups’ evaluations, inter-rater reliability was calculated with Krippendorff’s Alpha. Results of rated videos revealed different PSSA tasks to be reliable (134 items;  between relevant peer groups. Thus, the PSSA has benefit for educational concepts and learning-to-swim classes.