How reliable is the Polar Fitness Test Validity of a test means
that the test measures what it is supposed to measure and not
something else. The Polar Fitness Test was originally developed
on 305 healthy Finnish men and women in a study, where VO2max
prediction was developed using artificial neural network
analysis. The correlation coefficient between the laboratory
measured VO2max and the neural network prediction value was 0.97
and the mean error in the VO2max prediction was 6.5 % which is
good compared to any other predictive tests of VO2max. In
further development of the test, 119 fitness measurements of
healthy American men and women were included in the final
development of the neural network, making a total of 424
subjects. Based on these results the artificial neural network
was modified into Polar Fitness Test. The test was validated in
a study on 52 healthy men, who didn't belong to the group on
whom the test was developed. The mean deviation in the Polar
Fitness Test prediction was less than 12 %.