Review articleRelationship Between Test Methodology and Mean Velocity in Timed Walk Tests: A Review
Section snippets
Data Sources and Selection Criteria
Data for the current study were obtained from a review of the health care literature for studies using an established distance-based measure of walking speed. Electronic searches of the MEDLINE database were conducted followed by concerted searches within the bibliographies of obtained full-text (including review) articles. Because walking speed is not one of the National Library of Medicine's medical subjects heading terms, article abstracts and titles were searched for general descriptions of
Results
The sample included 46 studies. See figure 1 for a list of the studies included in the analyses and a detailed schematic of the study selection process.
Some studies evaluated walking speed with more than 1 methodology (eg, both usual- and fast-pace trials) so we obtained the mean velocity data from 56 participant groups (22 aged, 34 neuro) representing a total sample size of 18,428 (16,683 aged, 1745 neuro). The numbers of groups within each methodologic variable are shown in table 1. The aged
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of walk-test methodology on walking performance within the published literature. We found that pace is the single most important methodologic factor influencing walk performance. Neither starting protocol nor distance timed showed statistically significant affects on mean walking velocities. Also, whereas age was significantly associated with the mean velocity in bivariate analysis, it did not remain significant as a covariate in the weighted
Conclusions
Walk-test data are not measured uniformly nor is walk-test methodology reported completely. Consequently, it is difficult to compare walking performance across studies with dissimilar or unspecified test procedures.30 Although pace was the only methodologic factor that yielded consistent and statistically significant differences in walking velocity, the results suggest that all 3 methodologic factors evaluated may influence the clinical interpretation (meaningfulness) of a group's and/or
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Supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant nos. K02-AG019736, T32-HD007539, K01-HD046682) and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (grant no. H133P040003).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit upon the authors or upon any organization with which the authors are associated.