Report by Tyler Collings

Study information

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Concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of VALD ForceDecks strength, balance, and movement assessment tasks

Original Research published in Journal of Science and Medicine (May 2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2024.04.014

Tyler J. Collings1,2 PhD , Yuri Lopes Lima1,2 MSc, Benjamin Dutallis1,2 AEP, Matthew N. Bourne1,2 PhD

1School of Health Sciences and Social Work, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, QLD, Australia.
2Griffith Centre of Biomedical and Rehabilitation Engineering (GCORE), Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Australia.

Griffith University logo GCORE logo

Corresponding author: Dr Tyler Collings
1 Parklands Drive, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Southport 4215, QLD, Australia.
Email: t.collings@griffith.edu.au

Funding Declaration: Funding was provided by VALD to cover the cost of data collection, analysis, and reporting of data. Data analysis was performed independently of VALD.

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Participants

Inclusion/exclusion criteria
Participants included 16 healthy individuals recruited from a population of Australian University students. To be included, participants were required to be aged between 18-40 years, physically active multiple times per week (30+ minutes), and free from any current injuries or neurological conditions that may influence the ability to perform tests, any major injuries in the previous 1-2 months that may influence test results, and any current shoulder pain or instability, or lower back pain. All participants were encouraged to refrain from performing resistance training or intense physical activity on the day before testing.

Ethics
All participants provided written informed consent prior to data collection. Study ethics were approved by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee (GU reference: 2023/208).

Participant characteristics
Anthropometric measures for 16 participants. 10/16 (63%) participants were male and 6/16 (38%) were female. All participants except 1 were right-leg dominant.
Mean SD Range
Age (years) 25.9 2.9 20.3-29.7
Weight (kg) 71.8 14.9 50.2-102.5
Height (cm) 174.2 12.4 150-193.5
Days between tests 7.2 0.7 6-9

Equipment setup

Data were collected at the Griffith University motion laboratory, Gold Coast, Australia.

Force plates
Force plate data were acquired from the ForceDecks (FDLite, V.2, VALD, Brisbane, Australia) positioned on top of a tri-axial force plate embedded in the laboratory floor (AMTI, MA, United States). This arrangement enabled vertical ground reaction forces and centre of pressure to be measured from the ForceDecks as well as gold-standard laboratory-quality force plates simultaneously. Both force plates recorded data at 1000 Hz.

Before commencing testing, a weighted plate was used to determine the agreement in vertical ground reaction force between systems under static conditions, indicating a <1-2N difference between force plates.

The ForceDecks were operated using the iOS application (V.1.8.9) on an iPad (Apple, CA, United States) and the laboratory force plates were connected to VALD ForceDecks software for Windows (Microsoft, WA, United States).

Force plate arrangement