Officer says Air Force walk test discriminates - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Officer says Air Force walk test discriminates

Reserve Lt. Col. Chris Cote knew he needed to get in better shape.

The 56-year-old had passed the one-mile walk during his last PT test by the slimmest of margins, so he and a friend sat down to try and figure out their fitness goals. But as they crunched the numbers in the formula the Air Force uses to measure scores for the walk, Cote said, the two men started to feel they were getting a raw deal.

The way the Air Force calculates airmen’s scores for the test, they argued, is discriminatory — putting older airmen at a disadvantage as they try to pass the test. The service uses a calculation called VO2 max, which measures aerobic fitness with a formula based on a person’s weight, age, gender, walk time and heart rate.

Cote has since filed an equal-opportunity complaint with the service, claiming that his age meant he would receive a worse VO2 max score. The lieutenant colonel claims the formula penalizes older airmen because VO2 max scores naturally decline with age but Air Force formulas don’t account enough for that dip.

For example, Cote said, he narrowly passed with a VO2 max score of 32.9 based on his last fitness assessment at age 56. Three years later, assuming nothing changes but age, he will fail the test.

“It’s completely wrong,” said Cote, who takes the walk test because of problems with his knees. “I’m going to fail and they’re going to run me out of town, out of the Air Force, over something that is discriminating against me because of my age. And that’s wrong.

“And it’s not just me, the 56-year-old,” he said. “If you’re 30, the 20-year-old’s got a better deal than you.”

The Air Force could not find an expert to comment on Cote’s complaint by press time, although the service did provide a statement from fitness offificals, said Maj. Mary Danner-Jones, an Air Force spokeswoman.

More than 53,500 airmen have taken the walk test since the PT test was revised in July 2010; 6,527 — or 12.2 — percent, have failed.

Air Force fitness officials said in the emailed statement that they stand behind the current walk test as a fair way to measure fitness, saying the walk test’s methodology “is professionally accepted by the American College of Sports Medicine, and we support this test as our alternate Aerobic Component Fitness test.”

They added that the test isn’t age discriminatory, with July 2010 revisions making it easier for older airmen. The minimum passing score drops one point when airmen turn 30; by another two points when they turn 40; and by three points when they turn 50 and 60.

“We expanded the age groupings from 5-year to 10-year age group increments,” according to the statement, provided by Danner-Jones. “Consequently, these standards are now less stringent for older members. Additionally, with each age group the VO2 max score required to pass … gets lower.”

The officials also called Cote’s example “highly unlikely” since it holds all variables constant while judging age. Instead, they said, other variables such as walk time and final heart rate would likely vary from year to year.

But if all variables, except age, do remain constant, VO2 scores drop four points for every 10 year increment, according to a test of the calculations.

That’s where Cote’s complaint comes in.

The 436th Airlift Wing rejected his complaint in a Nov. 21 letter on several grounds: that the equal-opportunity law cited by Cote doesn’t apply to his status as a military member and that the complaint is too similar to a previously rejected complaint from the lieutenant colonel.

Cote said he plans to appeal the case.

“We have to be in shape and there’s a minimum performance we ought to all meet, and I get that,” said Cote, chief of operations plans for the 512th Airlift Wing at Dover Air Force Base, Del. “The trouble is, if I put in the same performance as a 20-year-old and he passes with a high score and I fail because I’m older, that’s the only reason.

“The performance level would be identical,” Cote said. “How can somebody younger pass with the same performance?”

Several medical professionals reviewed Cote’s argument. They cautioned that they don’t necessarily concur with Cote’s specific arguments, but said he raises an interesting point about how the Air Force calculates its walk-test data.

Jonathan Myers, a clinical professor of medicine from the cardiology division at Veterans Affairs Department Palo Alto Health Care System, said that equations must fit the populations they measure. He recommended the Air Force look at data it has collected of walk-test scores and come up with an equation to best fit airmen.

“Assuming Lt. Col. Cote is correct, the test has been applied incorrectly,” Myers said. “This is clearly a problem with the equation.”

Developing an equation shouldn’t be too difficult, with the right data, since it’s creating a simple linear regression — one of the easiest statistical tests you can do, Myers said.

“It may be a time to take stock of this and improve this,” Myers said. “If people are being … kicked out of the Air Force based on incorrect regression data, this is important.”

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, an exercise physiologist, helped popularize the concept of “aerobics” based on his work in the Air Force in the 1960s and 1970. He said that the requirements for VO2 max may be a little too high at ages 50 and up, but disagrees that there is age discrimination in the walk-test formula.

“It might need some slight correction, but the fact remains that as you get older, your maximal performance does go down,” said Cooper, the founder and chairman of Cooper Aerobics.

When all the variables do remain constant, age remains the deciding factor in the VO2 calculation, said Tommy Boone, a founding member and the first president of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists. And if everything lines itself up on a one-to-one, person-to-person basis, it can come across as age discrimination.

“However, the likelihood the majority of individuals tested will result in exactly the same outcome as presented comes across as being very small,” Boone wrote in an email. “Also, there is the very real point of view that the age factor discrimination works both ways.

“That is, at 56 years of age, a VO2 of 32 ml/kg/min is classified as moderate fitness, whereas, at 30 years of age, 32 ml/kg/min is low fitness,” he said. “Being younger than 56 years of age doesn’t mean for certain that the individual is healthy or that he will automatically have a higher VO2 value.”