Variations in User Implementation of the CORA Rating Metric

The CORA rating metric is frequently used in the field of injury biomechanics to compare the similarity of response time histories. However, subjectivity exists within the CORA metric in the form of user-customizable parameters that give the metric the flexibility to be used for a variety of applications. How these parameters are customized is not always reported in the literature, and it is unknown how these customizations affect the CORA scores. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate how variations in the CORA parameters affect the resulting similarity scores. A literature review was conducted to determine how the CORA parameters are commonly customized within the literature. Then, CORA scores for two datasets were calculated using the most common parameter customizations and the default parameters. Differences between the CORA scores using customized and default parameters were statistically significant for all customizations. Furthermore, most customizations produced score increases relative to the default settings. The use of standard deviation corridors and exclusion of the corridor component were found to produce the largest score differences. The observed differences demonstrated the need for researchers to exercise transparency when using customized parameters in CORA analyses.