Basic scienceReliability and agreement between 2 strength devices used in the newly modified and standardized Constant score
Section snippets
Material and methods
Sixty adult volunteers (30 women and 30 men, aged 19-83 years) from the Copenhagen area were tested within a 2-week period. The following inclusion criteria were used: age 18 years or older, ability to give informed consent, ability to speak and understand Danish, and no current shoulder problems. Subjects were recruited by telephone or E-mail, according to 6 prespecified age groups, with 10 subjects (5 women and 5 men) in each of the following 6 age groups: 18 to 29 years, 30 to 39 years, 40
Results
Of the 60 subjects, 15 were students (bachelor’s or higher level), 31 were working, and 14 were retired; 55 used the right arm as the dominant arm during testing; 48 reported that they were physically active; 9 reported a previous injury in the dominant shoulder; and the mean age for all subjects was 49.4 years (SD, 18.5 years). The 15 students, with a mean age of 29.6 years (SD, 7.4 years), presented significantly (P ≤ .02) higher total CS and strength values than the 14 retired subjects (mean
Discussion
This study, following the newly standardized guidelines for CS testing,2 found excellent relative reliability (ICC, 0.97) and very low measurement noise at a group level (<1 CS point) between the 2 strength devices examined: the IFC and the IDO. Thus, an increase or decrease by 1 or more CS strength points can be considered a true difference for a group of subjects, enabling comparison between data recorded with the IFC and IDO. Furthermore, we found that the total CS and both the raw and
Conclusions
The results of this study show that performances of the standardized strength test in the CS, carried out with the IFC and the IDO, are comparable at a group level because high relative reliability and very low measurement noise were found. It is recommended that an individual be tested with the same device to measure change over time. Our findings that age and especially sex affected strength values and thereby the total CS of healthy subjects are in accordance with results previously
Disclaimer
The authors, their immediate families, and any research foundations with which they are affiliated have not received any financial payments or other benefits from any commercial entity related to the subject of this article.
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