Measurements of temporal aspects of gait obtained with a multimemory stopwatch in persons with gait impairments.

Study Design: Repeated measures of 14 temporal factors of gait obtained with a multimemory stopwatch from a variety of subjects with locomotor impairments.

Objectives: To estimate the intratester and intertester reliability of 14 temporal factors of gait by using a multimemory stopwatch; to compare novice and expert clinicians at mastery of making these temporal measurements.

Background: Temporal gait measures are useful for describing the effectiveness of treatment interventions in patients with locomotor impairments.

Methods And Measures: Eleven adult subjects (mean age, 48.4 years; SD, 5.7 years), 10 with locomotor impairments and 1 elderly adult, ambulated along a 6-m walkway 3 times at a self-selected walking speed. The subjects were videotaped from the side as they walked. Four physical therapists independently analyzed the videotapes on 2 occasions; 2 examiners were recent graduates, and 2 others had 23 years of clinical experience. Intraclass correlation coefficients were used to estimate intratester reliability. A component of variance analysis quantified the sources of variation.

Results: Intraclass correlation coefficients for each of the 14 variables varied from 0.88 to 0.98. The major contributor to variance was subject, followed by trial, error, and tester; the tester factor generally contributed less than 1% to the total variance.

Conclusions: Reliable measurements of the temporal aspects of gait can be made by using a multimemory stopwatch and videotape in a clinical setting on patients with various locomotor problems. Our data suggest that measurements obtained by more experienced physical therapists were no more reliable than those made by recent graduates.