Data analysis
Walking speed, cadence and stride length were processed by VCM.
The mean and standard deviation of each spatiotemporal parameter were obtained for each test session.
For each subject, the coefficient of variation (CV) was calculated as a measure of the reproducibility within a session and between sessions.
For CV within a session, the mean and the standard deviation of the gait parameters from 5 trials were used, while for CV between sessions, those of the gait parameters from all 20 trials were used.
The coefficient of variation was averaged over the number of subjects for each parameter.
The mean and standard deviation of within-session and between-session CVs were also computed.
Although one frequently used estimate of reliability is the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), using the ICC as
a statistical method to clarify reproducibility and similarity for kinematic variables over the whole gait cycle is difficult
because those parameters are expressed as waveforms.
It was thus considered appropriate to use the adjusted coefficient of multiple correlation (CMC) recommended by
Kadaba et al.10) to evaluate the similarity of the wave-form parameters over the whole gait cycle.
Firstly, the qualitative similarity between waveforms was evaluated visually.
Next, the output data from the VCM was processed with Excel, and the CMC was calculated using formula described by Kadaba et al.10) (Table 1).