OBJECTIVE To evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the modified Oxford Grading Scale and the Peritron manometer. DESIGN All participants were evaluated twice, first by one examiner and 30 days later by a second examiner. Measurements of vaginal squeeze pressure were compared with the results from the palpation test. PARTICIPANTS Nineteen women with a mean age of 23.7 years (range 21 to 28...

BACKGROUND Some aspects of the neighborhood built environment may influence residents' physical activity, which in turn, affects their health. This study aimed to develop an urban built environment evaluation tool and conduct necessary reliability and validity tests. METHODS A 41-item urban built environment scan tool was developed to objectively assess the neighborhood built environment feat...

Excessive accumulation of abdominal adipose tissue is a widely recognized as a major feature of obesity, and it can be quantified by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). However, in a phantom study, the inter- and intra-instrument reliability of DXA remains unpredictable. Thus, we attempted to determine the precision of estimates from computer tomography-based measurements and analysis with ...

This study investigated the reliability of ultrasound in combination with surface electromyogram (EMG) for evaluating the activity of the abdominal muscles in individuals with and without low back pain during the abdominal drawing-in maneuver (ADIM). The study recruited ten individuals with or without low back pain, respectively. While the participants were performing the ADIM, the activities o...

PURPOSE Anterior hyoid displacement is essential for efficient swallowing and is usually investigated with videofluoroscopy. Ultrasound offers a less expensive and noninvasive method of investigation. The present study investigated the viability of a novel method of quantifying hyoid displacement from sonograms using an anatomic reference point, through an evaluation of inter- and intra-rater r...

Measuring the entorhinal cortex (ERC) is challenging due to lateral border discrimination from the perirhinal cortex. From a sample of 39 nondemented older adults who completed volumetric image scans and verbal memory indices, we examined reliability and validity concerns for three ERC protocols with different lateral boundary guidelines (i.e., Goncharova, Dickerson, Stoub, & deToledo-Morrell, ...

BACKGROUND The assessment of clinical manifestation of muscle fatigue is an effective procedure in establishing therapeutic exercise dose. Few studies have evaluated physical therapist reliability in establishing muscle fatigue through detection of changes in quality of movement patterns in a live setting. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to evaluate the inter-rater reliability of physi...

[Purpose] Reimers' hip migration percentage (MP) is commonly used to document the extent of hip displacement in children with cerebral palsy (CP). However, factors such as poor administration of pelvic radiographs, a lack of concentration, inexperience, or a busy clinical environment may result in variations in the MP measurements. The aim of this study was to compare the differences in the MP ...

AIM To evaluate the inter-rater reliability of measuring structural changes in the tendon of patients, clinically diagnosed with supraspinatus tendinopathy (cases) and healthy participants (controls), on ultrasound (US) images captured by standardised procedures. METHODS A total of 40 participants (24 patients) were included for assessing inter-rater reliability of measurements of fibrillar d...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the criterion-related validity, test-retest and inter-rater reliabilities of the modified sphygmomanometer test (MST) for assessment of the strength of the trunk and lower limb muscles in subjects with chronic stroke, and to verify whether the number of trials affected the results. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty-nine subjects with stroke (mean age 57.80 years; standard d...