A new method of interpreting the centre of gravity location using the modified Clinical Test of Sensory Interaction on Balance: A reliability study

This study tests the inter- and intra-rater reliability of a new method of interpreting centre of gravity (COG) location results of the modified Clinical Test of Sensory Interaction on Balance (mCTSIB) tested on the NeuroCOM Balance Master™ (BM). Sixty-three women (40--80 years) were randomly selected from a cohort of 500 women from the Longitudinal Assessment of Women (LAW) study. Start location of COG, as provided diagrammatically in the BM test results, for each of the four tests (firm surface, eyes open and closed; foam surface, eyes open and closed) was subjectively allocated by two raters (blinded to one another) to one of nine location categories on two occasions separated by at least 2 weeks. Kappa (к) analysis of the data showed a substantial level of both inter-rater [к = 0.84 (95% CI = 0.82--0.86)] and intra-rater [rater 1 к = 0.78 (95% CI = 0.74--0.79), rater 2 к = 0.88 (95% CI = 0.86--0.90)] reliability. The strong inter- and intra-rater reliability of this new interpretation of COG location in the mCTSIB test on the BM suggests that this may be an additional reliable method for clinicians to interpret results from steady state balance tests on the BM.