Inter-rater reliability between osteopaths of differing clinical experience on sagittal plane running gait analysis: A pilot study

Objective

Clinical running analysis is commonly employed in the screening of running related injuries. Currently, there remains little research exploring the use of clinical running analysis within the osteopathic profession. Hence, the aim of this pilot study is to investigate the inter-rater reliability of sagittal plane visual gait observation amongst osteopathic practitioners.

Methods

Fourteen osteopaths were recruited through an online platform. Each participant completed five, 11-item gait analysis forms, with each form corresponding to a different running gait video recorded in the sagittal plane. Krippendorff's alpha (Kα) was calculated to determine the inter-rater reliability between all participants, and between groups based on years of clinical experience.

Results

Very low inter-rater reliability was found between all participants (Kα<0.67) across all questions. Strong reliability was found for two questions answered by the 5–10 years’ experience group (Kα<0.8155) with regard to foot strike in the runners.

Discussion

The poor inter-rater reliability found in this pilot study, is in disagreement with previous research that has identified high inter-rater reliability with practitioners of varied clinical experience on a similar gait analysis task. These discrepancies may be explained by a range of methodological differences and limitations, chiefly the sample size and the objective nature of the kinematic observation tasks.

Conclusion

The results of this pilot study indicate there is very low reliability between this group of clinicians interpretation of running gait. Building on from this, future research should investigate clinician inter-rater reliability using more objective gait analysis measures.