Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 7, 2026
Motor Dual-Tasks for Gait Analysis and Evaluation in Post-Stroke Patients
Published on: March 11, 2021
Validity of simple gait-related dual-task tests in predicting falls in community-dwelling older adults
Jennifer Muhaidat1, Andrew Kerr2, Jonathan J Evans3
1School of Health and Life Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Objective:
To investigate the predictive validity of simple gait-related dual-task (DT) tests in predicting falls in community-dwelling older adults.
Design:
A validation cohort study with 6 months' follow-up.
Setting:
General community.
Participants:
Independently ambulant community-dwelling adults (N=66) aged ≥65 years, with normal cognitive function. Sixty-two completed the follow-up. No participants required frames for walking.
Interventions:
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures:
Occurrence of falls in the follow-up period and performance on primary and secondary tasks of 8 DT tests and 1 triple-task (TT) test.
Results:
A random forest classification analysis identified the top 5 predictors of a fall as (1) absolute difference in time between the Timed Up & Go (TUG) as a single task (ST) and while carrying a cup; (2) time required to complete the walking task in the TT test; (3 and 4) walking and avoiding a moving obstacle as an ST and while carrying a cup; and (5) performing the TUG while carrying a cup. Separate bivariate logistic regression analyses showed that performance on these tasks was significantly associated with falling (P<.01). Despite the random forest analysis being a more robust approach than multivariate logistic regression, it was not clinically useful for predicting falls.
Conclusions:
This study identified the most important outcome measures in predicting falls using simple DT tests. The results showed that measures of change in performance were not useful in a multivariate model when compared with an "allocated all to falls" rule.
