Date of Award

1993

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Master of Physical Therapy (MPT)

Department

Physical Therapy

First Advisor

Henry C. Wessman

Keywords

Muscles -- physiology

Abstract

Manual muscle testing is an integral part of the physical therapy evaluation. There are two methods of testing muscle strength, these being the Kendall and McCreary (KM) method and the Daniels and Worthingham (DW) method. The purpose of this study was to compare the force produced in each of these methods when testing the tensor fasciae latae muscle. Thirty healthy subjects ranging in age from 23 to 40 years participated in this study. The Dynatron II Dynamometer was used to measure force in pounds for each method. Each subject performed one trial and one test for each method for a total of four tests. Results showed that the intrarater reliability of the KM method was good at r = .878 while reliability for the DW method was substantially less at r = .136. Consequently, comparisons of KM trial vs. DW trial were also low at r = .225 as was KM test vs. DW test at r = .460. Results also showed that the force produced for the KM method was significantly less than the DW method for both trial and test. In summary, this study showed a significant difference in force produced between the KM and DW method and also showed a considerably higher intrarater reliability for the KM method versus the DW method. Reasons for these differences are discussed.

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