Inter-rater reliability of a classification system for athletes with intellectual disabilities in adapted judo competitions

Background and Study Aim: The proliferation of adapted judo programs for people with intellectual disabilities has garnered continuous growth in the number of participants in this activity. As a result of this growing popularity, a number of adapted international judo competitions are now being held. The adaptive judo classificatiation system was established to ensure that Special Needs judo athletes could be appropriately divided into categories to ensure their safety within the context of competition. The purpose of this study is knowledge about the reliability of the recently developed classification system for individuals with intellectual disabilities in adapted judo competitions.Material and Methods: The classification system has five levels according to functional criteria. Six raters (experts) evaluated 20 videos of official adapted judo competitions, corresponding to one of the five proposed classification categories. Two methods were used to quantify the degree of inter-rater agreement as to the analysis and classification of the recorded matches. Inter-rater agreement was evaluated using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Fleiss-Kappa procedures.Results: Results indicated an excellent degree of inter-rater reliability, showing that the system produces consistent results with different raters.Conclusions: This study represents an important step forward in the classification level of participants in adapted judo competitions for people with intellectual disabilities. Future international adapted judo competitions would benefit from field studies to confirm the reliability of this classification system.