Practical Applications: Constructing Part II of the NBFE PFT Examination

Over the past 18 months our initiative has grown from a brief thought, to ideas of how a national fitness standard could be realized, to the place we are today: committed to creating a hands-on Part II examination that provides a reliable measure of a personal fitness trainer’s practical skills. The discussions have gone from 30,000 feet above the earth, down to hitting the road with a real road map, detailing how we will get from where we are now to the place we want to be. We’ve transitioned from having a good idea to implementing the idea and recruiting the industry expertise to make it happen. Fortunately for the fitness profession, Dr. Scott Arbet, a former vice president of the National Board of Medical Examiners, is leading the next phase.

The NBFE, in collaboration with many other major leaders in the fitness industry, is in the process of creating a hands-on performance assessment for the personal fitness trainer. The examination will provide multiple simulated "real life" situations that a personal fitness trainer could encounter in his or her daily life as a fitness expert.

Our intent is to provide a brief yet comprehensive sampling of these multiple encounters in such a way as to provide the candidate with a representation of real work situations. These encounters will be designed for simple and reliable scoring to allow us (the profession) to set the minimum performance standards to pass.

The content of the encounters will be determined by using the job task analysis survey done for Part I, which measures the content knowledge necessary to be a personal fitness trainer. The job task analysis results provided the framework for the test specifications blueprint. The same job task analysis and test specifications blueprint will be presented to a separate group of industry experts, YOU, to determine the appropriate areas to be assessed in Part II. An additional survey of independent industry experts will validate the determined consensus.

The final specifications for Part II will be used to guide us in developing the appropriate encounters necessary to create a valid and reliable assessment of the skills essential to safe and effective personal fitness training.

At this time, it is projected that each candidate will have 8 to 10 client interactions. Each candidate will be expected to exhibit a number of appropriate behaviors in each encounter, which will serve as a checklist for the assessment of the candidate. Each candidate will be expected to reach a certain level of proficiency in order to pass.

This pass/fail point will be determined by yet another group of independent industry content experts via an in-depth, content-based, standard-setting process matching the process used to determine the pass/fail decision for the patient/physician encounters of medical licensing examinations.

At this time, we are asking you to participate in the scripting of the content/scenarios for consideration in the performance assessment. To be eligible to participate, you must have practiced as a full-time personal fitness trainer for at least 3 years, with a majority of your time spent training clients.

If you or someone you know meets these qualifications, visit: NBFE.org/practicalexamination and sign up for the Practical Exam Committee.