Agreement between the GAITRite walkway system and a stopwatch-footfall count method for measurement of temporal and spatial gait parameters.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the agreement for measurements of stride length, cadence, and walking speed obtained from the GAITRite system and the stopwatch-footfall count technique.

DESIGN: Criterion standard.

SETTING: Research laboratory in a physical therapy education program.

PARTICIPANTS: Forty healthy volunteers (13 men, 27 women) without lower-extremity injury.

INTERVENTIONS: Participants walked across a GAITRite mat with embedded pressure sensors at their self-selected walking speed. Simultaneously, an examiner used a stopwatch to record the elapsed time necessary to cross the mat and counted the number of complete footfalls.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Walking speed, cadence, and stride-length measures were compared between the GAITRite system and the stopwatch-footfall count technique.

RESULTS: Correlation coefficients comparing both systems were .97 for walking speed, .75 for cadence, and .85 for stride length. Ninety-five percent of the time we would expect the between-methods differences to range between .09 and -.05m/s for walking speed, between -1.5 and -24.3 steps/min for cadence, and between .01 and .37m for stride length.

CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that the GAITRite and stopwatch-footfall count methods lack clinically acceptable agreement for the measurements of cadence and stride length in a group of healthy volunteers walking at their self-selected speeds. Clinicians who require precise measurement of cadence and stride length should consider using the GAITRite system instead of the stopwatch-footfall count technique.