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Reliability of manual skinfold tests in a healthy male population
P H Rouwmaat1, D Everaert, K H Stappaerts
1Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health Care, Polytechnic of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Objective:
To assess the intra- and interexaminer agreement of a manual skinfold thickness test and a manual skinfold compliance test. The relation between the weekly routine of the examiners and the intraexaminer reliability was also assessed for both tests.
Design:
This is a reliability study of a common palpatory procedure to assess skinfold thickness and skinfold compliance. Twelve healthy subjects were palpated twice in two sessions by 12 examiners.
Setting:
The study was conducted at the Polytechnic of Utrecht (the Netherlands), Faculty of Health Care, Department of Physiotherapy.
Subjects:
Healthy male subjects recruited from students of the Polytechnic of Utrecht (the Netherlands), Department of Physiotherapy.
Results:
The intraexaminer agreement Intraclass Correlation Coefficient [ICC(3.1)] was .25 for skinfold thickness and .28 for skinfold compliance. The interexaminer agreement [ICC(2,1)] ranged from .01 to .24. The Pearson correlation coefficient between the examiners age and routine vs. intraexaminer agreement ranged from -.41 to .23 (nonsignificant).
Conclusions:
The intra- and interexaminer agreement of the manual skinfold test produced poor-to-fair reliability. The correlation between the examiners' weekly routine and the intraexaminer reliability ranged from low negative to little (if any). This study shows a lack of reliability of palpatory tests for skinfold thickness and skinfold compliance. This outcome agrees with results of previous studies found in the literature.