Agreement Between the GAITRite Walkway System and a Stopwatch–Footfall Count Method for Measurement of Temporal and Spatial Gait Parameters

Abstract

Youdas JW, Hollman JH, Aalbers MJ, Ahrenholz HN, Aten RA, Cremers JJ. Agreement between the GAITRite walkway system and a stopwatch–footfall count method for measurement of temporal and spatial gait parameters. Objective To determine the agreement for measurements of stride length, cadence, and walking speed obtained from the GAITRite system and the stopwatch–footfall count technique. Design Criterion standard. Setting Research laboratory in a physical therapy education program. Participants Forty healthy volunteers (13 men, 27 women) without lower-extremity injury. Interventions Participants walked across a GAITRite mat with embedded pressure sensors at their self-selected walking speed. Simultaneously, an examiner used a stopwatch to record the elapsed time necessary to cross the mat and counted the number of complete footfalls. Main Outcome Measures Walking speed, cadence, and stride-length measures were compared between the GAITRite system and the stopwatch–footfall count technique. Results Correlation coefficients comparing both systems were .97 for walking speed, .75 for cadence, and .85 for stride length. Ninety-five percent of the time we would expect the between-methods differences to range between .09 and −.05m/s for walking speed, between −1.5 and −24.3 steps/min for cadence, and between .01 and .37m for stride length. Conclusions This study shows that the GAITRite and stopwatch–footfall count methods lack clinically acceptable agreement for the measurements of cadence and stride length in a group of healthy volunteers walking at their self-selected speeds. Clinicians who require precise measurement of cadence and stride length should consider using the GAITRite system instead of the stopwatch–footfall count technique.