Design, development, validity and reliability of Iranian made jumping evaluation device with Ultrasonic sensors

Vertical jump test is an important measure to investigate the power and explosive strength, lower extremity injuries mechanism and time estimation of return to sport after the injuries among the athletes. The present study intends to introduce a new developed device which is designed to register and analyze the vertical jump. It also investigates the validity and the reliability of this device. The new designed device includes Ultrasound Waves producer sensors which measure the jump after touching the head. Yagami Sargent vertical jump device was applied to investigate the validity of the new device. So, 15 Volleyball, basketball and handball players from the national teams were selected. Any of the selected athletes completed the vertical jump protocol with Yagami Sargent and also with Ultrasonic jump device for 5 times. To check the validity of the new designed device (investigate the correlation between two devices), Pearson correlation coefficient was applied. To investigate the reliability of Ultrasonic jump device, Interclass correlation (ICC) was applied. The findings show that there is high reliability between the results collected from Yagami Sargent device and ultrasonic jump device (r= 0.91). Also there is a high ICC rate for the 5 vertical jump tests (ICC=0.96). The findings show that Ultrasonic Jump device is reliable in measuring the vertical jump and in the meantime has a high validity in such measurement. Therefore, applying this device is highly recommended for a fast and accurate vertical jump measurement.