Reliability of the Bloomfield Movement Classification

The Bloomfield Movement Classification (BMC) (Bloomfield et al., 2004) is a detailed classification of movement used to analyse speed agility quickness demands of different sports. The purpose of the current investigation was to evaluate the inter-operator reliability of the BMC for the analysis of soccer. Two independent observers applied the BMC to a single subject’s purposeful movement (5 mins 45s within 15 minutes of Sky’s PlayerCam coverage of the player). This took between 4 and 6 hours for each observer to enter. There was a good strength of inter-observer agreement for movement type (κ = 0.7277), direction of movement (κ = 0.6968), intensity of movement (κ = 0.7062) and games related activity (κ = 0.7891) with a moderate strength of agreement being achieved for turning (κ = 0.5639). It is recommended that when the BMC to analyse movement patterns in any sport, it is essential to establish the level of reliability of the method when being used by the observers involved in the research.