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MobileMat BESS is consistent, reliable

Boston, MA-based TekScan’s automated balance error scoring system (BESS) produces results in good agreement with trained human raters, according to a study epublished on October 7 by the Journal of Sport Rehabilitation.

In this inter-rater reliability study, researchers in Department of Kinesiology and Applied Physiology at the University of Del­aware in Newark compared scores derived by TekScan’s MobileMat BESS with those of three trained human scorers. Raters asked 111 college athletes (age, 19 ± 2 years; height, 168 ± 41 cm; weight, 69 ± 4 kg; 58 women) to perform the BESS standing on the MobileMat. The MobileMat displayed an error score at the end of each trial and the raters recorded errors simultaneously.

The researchers computed the number of errors for the six stances from the software and each of the three human scorers. The double-leg, single-leg, and tandem firm stances showed good agreement with human scorers, and all foam stances resulted in fair agreement.

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