Digital assessment of walking ability: Validity and reliability of the automated figure-of-eight walk test in older adults.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Walking*/physiology ; Walk Test*/methods; Humans ; Aged ; Female ; Male ; Reproducibility of Results ; Geriatric Assessment/methods ; Aged, 80 and over ; Independent Living

Background: The Figure-of-Eight Walk Test (F8WT) can assess straight- and curved-path walking ability, but the validity and reliability of automated measurement of the F8WT using digital device has not yet been studied. The aim of this study was to verify the validity (method comparison) and test-retest reliability of the automated FW8T (aFW8T) using a digital device based on image analysis by comparing the results of the aF8WT with those of the manual F8WT (mF8WT).
Methods: Community-dwelling older adults underwent the mF8WT performed by a physiotherapist and the aF8WT using the Digital Senior Fitness Test system. To verify the test-retest reliability, the aF8WT was administered again to a randomly selected group of participants one week after the baseline test. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Pearson's correlation analysis were used to verify the degree of agreement between the results of and correlation between the mF8WT and aF8WT, respectively. The 95% confidence interval (CI) of the limits of agreement (LoA) was obtained using Bland-Altman analysis.
Results: The analysis included 83 participants (mean age 71.6 ± 4.7 years). The participants' mF8WT and aF8WT results were 29.1 ± 4.9 and 29.8 ± 4.9 seconds, respectively. Pearson's correlation analysis showed a very strong correlation between the mF8WT and aF8WT results with r = 0.91 (p < 0.001), and the ICC between the mF8WT and aF8WT results was 0.95 (0.91-0.97), showing excellent agreement. The 95% CI of the LoA was -0.7 (-4.8 to 3.3) seconds in the Bland-Altman analysis. In an analysis of the test-retest reliability of the aF8WT, participants' aF8WT results were 30.9 ± 4.7 seconds (baseline) and 29.6 ± 4.9 seconds (retest), with an ICC of 0.94 (0.81-0.98, p < 0.001), indicating excellent reliability.
Conclusion: Automated measurement of the F8WT using a digital device showed excellent validity and reliability. The aF8WT can be used to assess and monitor the walking ability of community-dwelling older adults.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2025 Kong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

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Date Created: 20250210 Date Completed: 20250210 Latest Revision: 20250212

20250212

PMC11809801

10.1371/journal.pone.0316612

39928640