Reliability and validity of a smartphone based inclinometer application measuring shoulder internal rotation

This study intended to evaluate the reliability and validity of a smartphone-based inclinometer application and compare these results to those of the standard clinical goniometer. The study measured the internal shoulder rotation of 19 men and 20 women. One third-year physical therapy student took all the smartphone-based inclinometer measurements, and another took all the clinical standard goniometer measurements. The subjects were randomly placed into set amounts of internal rotation, and then the two measurements were taken. The study found no significant difference between the smartphone-based inclinometer and the goniometer. The reliability between the app and the goniometers was good to excellent.

Author(s): Taylor Lau, Sheng Lin, Tyler True, Wayne Wu and James M McKivigan*

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