BACKGROUND: Although achieving quality of movement after stroke is an important aim of physiotherapy it is rarely measured objectively or described explicitly. OBJECTIVE: To test whether physiotherapists agree on a composite measure of quality of movement. SETTING; A movement analysis laboratory SUBJECTS: Ten stroke patients and 10 healthy age-matched volunteers. DESIGN: Prospective correlational. PROCEDURE: All subjects were videofilmed performing three trials of six standardized functional tasks. Two videotapes were made, each with a different randomized order of appearance of the trials. Ten senior physiotherapists independently rated the videotapes twice using a 100-mm visual analogue scale. ANALYSIS: Analysis of variance models were fitted to transformed data. Estimates of components of variance were calculated and presented as a percentage of the total variance for differences, within subjects (intra-subject), between raters (inter-rater) and within raters (intra-rater). An acceptable percentage was set at less than 10%. RESULTS: The percentage of intra-subject variance ranged from 1% (pick up box and walking) to 9% (step on block). The percentage of inter-rater variance ranged from 18% (pick up pencil) to 38% (sit to stand). The percentage of intra-rater variance was less than 1% for all tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Although physiotherapists disagreed with each other on quality of movement they were more consistent in their own scoring.
BACKGROUND: Although achieving quality of movement after stroke is an important aim of physiotherapy it is rarely measured objectively or described explicitly. OBJECTIVE: To test whether physiotherapists agree on a composite measure of quality of movement. SETTING; A movement analysis laboratory SUBJECTS: Ten strokepatients and 10 healthy age-matched volunteers. DESIGN: Prospective correlational. PROCEDURE: All subjects were videofilmed performing three trials of six standardized functional tasks. Two videotapes were made, each with a different randomized order of appearance of the trials. Ten senior physiotherapists independently rated the videotapes twice using a 100-mm visual analogue scale. ANALYSIS: Analysis of variance models were fitted to transformed data. Estimates of components of variance were calculated and presented as a percentage of the total variance for differences, within subjects (intra-subject), between raters (inter-rater) and within raters (intra-rater). An acceptable percentage was set at less than 10%. RESULTS: The percentage of intra-subject variance ranged from 1% (pick up box and walking) to 9% (step on block). The percentage of inter-rater variance ranged from 18% (pick up pencil) to 38% (sit to stand). The percentage of intra-rater variance was less than 1% for all tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Although physiotherapists disagreed with each other on quality of movement they were more consistent in their own scoring.
Authors: Ravi Komatireddy; Anang Chokshi; Jeanna Basnett; Michael Casale; Daniel Goble; Tiffany Shubert Journal: Int J Phys Med Rehabil Date: 2014-07-29