The intra- and inter-rater reliability of five clinical muscle performance tests in patients with and without neck pain

摘要

BackgroundThis study investigates the reliability of muscle performance tests using cost- and time-effective methods similar to those used in clinical practice. When conducting reliability studies, great effort goes into standardising test procedures to facilitate a stable outcome. Therefore, several test trials are often performed. However, when muscle performance tests are applied in the clinical setting, clinicians often only conduct a muscle performance test once as repeated testing may produce fatigue and pain, thus variation in test results. We aimed to investigate whether cervical muscle performance tests, which have shown promising psychometric properties, would remain reliable when examined under conditions similar to those of daily clinical practice.