Intra-Rater Reliability of Postural Adjustment in Response to External Perturbations in Healthy Adults

Postural adjustments are commonly performed to prepare the body before initiating upper and lower extremity movements, especially before independent walking in the community. Force plates, or the Wii balance board (WBB), are well known items of equipment used to assess the displacement of the center of pressure (COP. In this study objective tests were conducted to analyze the characteristics of COP displacement when reacting to an external perturbation measured by the WBB used with MFU static balance test software version 2. Ten participants were included in this studym with a mean age of 20.9 years. The intra-rater reliability, and test-retest reliability, was tested for a single assessor on two occasions, one day apart. Results indicate excellent intra-rater reliability for the COP displacement during both the Anticipatory postural adjustment phase and the Compensatory postural adjustment phase, with an absence of systematic bias. The results showed a substantial agreement in the intra-rater reliability of the WBB with MFU static balance test software version 2 while measuring the COP during an external perturbation to balance in healthy standing adults.