Local Listening - a General Diagnostic Tool? An Experimental Examination of its Reliability
Item
- Title
- Local Listening - a General Diagnostic Tool? An Experimental Examination of its Reliability
- Author(s)
- Podlesnic Wolfgang
- Abstract
-
Agreements of findings in manual diagnosis often are low and thus reliability is poor.
The abdominal local listening test is one of the screening tests performed first by many
osteopaths during the diagnostic process, and therefore in many cases an initial step for
the further treatment. I want to find out via this methodological study, whether the same
or at least a similar result can be obtained, when several osteopaths perform this test
independently. It is my intention, to investigate the saying and reliability of this test
generally and not only restricted to the visceral level.
14 osteopaths perform this test on 15 test persons, three of them twice. The direction
where their sensing hand is drawn to is noted and the agreement of the sensed direction
is evaluated by means of Cohen's kappa (κ-indices).
In approximately half of all comparisons between the therapists, the κ-indices indicate
only agreements on the level of chance. The best agreements observed feature only a
fair reliability.
The influence of the therapists’ experience on the results did not turn out to be
significant, though there might be trends that the agreement increases with the
experience.
The number of agreements above the level of chance is higher in the first half of the
investigation than in the second half. There is evidence that the conditions are changed
during the examinations.
The values of the intra-examiner reliability are higher than those of the inter-examiner
reliability (maximum moderate), but also here results can be observed, which are on a
level of chance.
Summing it up, this test is not universally valid in the way as it was performed.
Additional supervision in advance of the examinations, a more distinct regulation of the
level, from which the information should be gained, a longer time for the test and a
regulation of the pressure of the hand should increase the agreements. - presented at
- Wiener Schule für Osteopathie
- Date Accepted
- 2007
- Date Submitted
- 1.3.2007 00:00:00
- Type
- osteo_thesis
- Language
- English
- Number of pages
- 85
- Submitted by:
- 62
- Pub-Identifier
- 13326
- Inst-Identifier
- 781
- Keywords
- Ecute,Local Listening
- Recommended
- 1
- Medium
- Podlesnic_engl.pdf
- Item sets
- Thesis
- Media
- Podlesnic_engl.pdf
Podlesnic Wolfgang, “Local Listening - a General Diagnostic Tool? An Experimental Examination of its Reliability”, Osteopathic Research Web, accessed May 4, 2025, https://www.osteopathicresearch.com/s/orw/item/3017