Intrarater and Interrater Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the 3-Meter Backward Walk Test in Non-frail, Pre-frail, and Frail Older Adults in Residential Care Homes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
IMPORTANCE: Assessing backward walking ability in older adults is crucial due to its strong association with balance, mobility, and fall risk. The 3-meter backward walk test (3MBWT) provides a quick and valid tool for this purpose. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the 3MBWT and to determine its effectiveness in differentiating between different levels of frailty. DESIGN: This study used a cross-section design. SETTING: The study was carried out in residential care homes for older adults. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were able to walk with or without assistance and were excluded if they had a Mini-Mental State Examination score ≤ 17. INTERVENTIONS: Participants underwent the 3MBWT and the 10-meter walk test (10MWT). In addition, the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) was administered. MAIN OUTCOME(S) AND MEASURE(S): Frailty was assessed using the SHARE-FI instrument, with participants classified as non-frail, pre-frail, or frail. Reliability of the 3MBWT was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC [3,1]), and concurrent validity was assessed using the 10MWT and SPPB. Fall history over the past year was obtained from medical records and participant interviews. RESULTS: Participants (n = 217) were categorized as non-frail (27%), pre-frail (31%), or frail (42%). The average 3MBWT times were 5.0, 5.9, and 11.8 seconds for participants who were non-frail, pre-frail, and frail, respectively. The 3MBWT showed good to excellent intrarater reliability (ICC = 0.89-0.93) and excellent interrater reliability (ICC = 0.90-0.99). It showed strong correlations with the 10MWT (r = 0.91) and SPPB walking speed (r = 0.94), and a negative correlation with the SPPB total score (r = -0.86). Moderate correlations were found with the Falls Efficacy Scale International (r = 0.71) and Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (r = 0.61), and a high correlation with falls in the last 12 months (r = 0.74). CONCLUSIONS: The 3MBWT is a reliable tool for assessing physical performance and differentiating levels of frailty in older adults, with a strong association with fall history. RELEVANCE: The 3MBWT offers clinicians a quick, simple, and valid tool for assessing older adults in residential care.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".