Interexaminer Reliability of the Deltoid and Psoas Muscle Test

OBJECTIVE: To determine if 2 practitioners of differing skill levels could reliably agree on the presence of a weak or strong deltoid or psoas muscle. STUDY DESIGN: Interexaminer reliability study of 2 common muscle tests. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Cohen kappa (unweighted) scores, observer agreement, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: The results showed that an experienced and a novice practitioner have good agreement when using repeated muscle test procedures on the deltoid ( kappa 0.62) and the psoas ( kappa 0.67). CONCLUSIONS: The manual muscle test procedures using the anterior deltoid or psoas showed good interexaminer reliability when used by an experienced and a novice user. These techniques may be used between practitioners in multidoctor assessment/management programs.