title: Intra and intersession reliability of balance measures during one-leg standing in young adults.
abstract: A study was designed to investigate the intra and intersession reliability during 1-leg standing recorded from a computerized balance platform. Thirty-nine healthy young men (n = 17, age range: 20-30 years) and women (n = 22, age range: 21-28 years) performed 3 testing sessions, with the second session 30 minutes (intrasession comparison) and the third session 1 week (intersession comparison) after the initial testing session. Within each testing session, participants completed 3 trials of 1-leg standing with their dominant leg. Reliability statistics were calculated using the mean of all 3 trials during each session for 6 balance measures (i.e., total displacements of the center of pressure [CoP], the CoP displacements in mediolateral and anterior-posterior directions, and the CoP speed and CoP area and their SD). Test-retest reliability was examined calculating both, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) and Bland-Altman plots. In both sexes and irrespective of balance measure, ICC values were ≥0.75 except for 1 parameter in men. This indicates an excellent intra and intersession reliability. Bland-Altman plots confirmed these findings by showing that only 1 or 2 (4.5-11.8%) of the data points were beyond the 95% CI. Practitioners and clinicians are provided with a posturographic test setup that proved to be reliable. Researchers can use these data to identify the range in which the true value of a subject's score lies and estimate a priori sample sizes.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Exercise and Health Sciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland. t.muehlbauer@uni-jena.de
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Muehlbauer
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Roth
authors.forename: Sylvana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mueller
authors.forename: Urs
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Granacher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007866:Leg / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D004856:Postural Balance / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D055815:Young Adult