title: Physiotherapist agreement when visually rating movement quality during lower extremity functional screening tests.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate physiotherapist agreement in rating movement quality during lower extremity functional tests using two visual rating methods and physiotherapists with differing clinical experience.
  
  
  METHODS
  Clinical measurement.
  
  
  METHODS
  Six healthy individuals were rated by 44 physiotherapists. These raters were in three groups (inexperienced, novice, experienced).
  
  
  METHODS
  Video recordings of all six individuals performing four lower extremity functional tests were visually rated (dichotomous or ordinal scale) using two rating methods (overall or segment) on two occasions separated by 3-4 weeks. Intra and inter-rater agreement for physiotherapists was determined using overall percentage agreement (OPA) and the first order agreement coefficient (AC1).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Intra-rater agreement for overall and segment methods ranged from slight to almost perfect (OPA: 29-96%, AC1: 0.01 to 0.96). AC1 agreement was better in the experienced group (84-99% likelihood) and for dichotomous rating (97-100% likelihood). Inter-rater agreement ranged from fair to good (OPA: 45-79%; AC1: 0.22-0.71). AC1 agreement was not influenced by clinical experience but was again better using dichotomous rating.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Physiotherapists' visual rating of movement quality during lower extremity functional tests resulted in slight to almost perfect intra-rater agreement and fair to good inter-rater agreement. Agreement improved with increased level of clinical experience and use of dichotomous rating.
authors.affiliation: Health and Rehabilitation Research Centre, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand. chris.whatman@aut.ac.nz
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Whatman
authors.forename: Wayne
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hing
authors.forename: Patria
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hume
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D032921:Consensus; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D035002:Lower Extremity / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D059825:Physical Therapists; D016059:Range of Motion, Articular; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014741:Video Recording; D055815:Young Adult