Interexaminer Reliability of the Deltoid and Psoas Muscle Test

Received 6 June 2003; accepted 1 October 2003.

Objective

To determine if 2 practitioners of differing skill levels could reliably agree on the presence of a weak or strong deltoid or psoas muscle.

Study Design

Interexaminer reliability study of 2 common muscle tests.

Main Outcome Measures

Cohen κ (unweighted) scores, observer agreement, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Results

The results showed that an experienced and a novice practitioner have good agreement when using repeated muscle test procedures on the deltoid (κ 0.62) and the psoas (κ 0.67).

Conclusions

The manual muscle test procedures using the anterior deltoid or psoas showed good interexaminer reliability when used by an experienced and a novice user. These techniques may be used between practitioners in multidoctor assessment/management programs.

a Senior Lecturer Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

b Private Practice of Chiropractic, Cronulla, NSW, Australia

Henry Pollard, DC, PhD, The ONE Research Foundation, 1991 Village Park Way, Suite 201-A, Encinitas, CA 92024.

Sources of financial support: the ONE Research Foundation provided a grant to support this work.

PII: S0161-4754(04)00262-3

doi:10.1016/j.jmpt.2004.12.008

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