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Estimating the accuracy of muscle response testing: two randomised-order blinded studies

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, November 2016
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  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (94th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (97th percentile)

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18 X users
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45 Facebook pages
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1 Wikipedia page
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1 Google+ user
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1 YouTube creator

Citations

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6 Dimensions

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53 Mendeley
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Title
Estimating the accuracy of muscle response testing: two randomised-order blinded studies
Published in
BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, November 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12906-016-1416-2
Pubmed ID
Authors

Anne M. Jensen, Richard J. Stevens, Amanda J. Burls

Abstract

Manual muscle testing (MMT) is a non-invasive assessment tool used by a variety of health care providers to evaluate neuromusculoskeletal integrity, and muscular strength in particular. In one form of MMT called muscle response testing (MRT), muscles are said to be tested, not to evaluate muscular strength, but neural control. One established, but insufficiently validated, application of MRT is to assess a patient's response to semantic stimuli (e.g. spoken lies) during a therapy session. Our primary aim was to estimate the accuracy of MRT to distinguish false from true spoken statements, in randomised and blinded experiments. A secondary aim was to compare MRT accuracy to the accuracy when practitioners used only their intuition to differentiate false from true spoken statements. Two prospective studies of diagnostic test accuracy using MRT to detect lies are presented. A true positive MRT test was one that resulted in a subjective weakening of the muscle following a lie, and a true negative was one that did not result in a subjective weakening of the muscle following a truth. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using a simplified methodology. In Experiment 1, 48 practitioners were paired with 48 MRT-naïve test patients, forming unique practitioner-test patient pairs. Practitioners were enrolled with any amount of MRT experience. In Experiment 2, 20 unique pairs were enrolled, with test patients being a mix of MRT-naïve and not-MRT-naïve. The primary index test was MRT. A secondary index test was also enacted in which the practitioners made intuitive guesses ("intuition"), without using MRT. The actual verity of the spoken statement was compared to the outcome of both index tests (MRT and Intuition) and their mean overall fractions correct were calculated and reported as mean accuracies. In Experiment 1, MRT accuracy, 0.659 (95% CI 0.623 - 0.695), was found to be significantly different (p < 0.01) from intuition accuracy, 0.474 (95% CI 0.449 - 0.500), and also from the likelihood of chance (0.500; p < 0.01). Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1. Testing for various factors that may have influenced MRT accuracy failed to detect any correlations. MRT has repeatedly demonstrated significant accuracy for distinguishing lies from truths, compared to both intuition and chance. The primary limitation of this study is its lack of generalisability to other applications of MRT and to MMT. The Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR; www.anzctr.org.au ; ID # ACTRN12609000455268 , and US-based ClinicalTrials.gov (ID # NCT01066312 ).

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 18 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 53 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 53 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 7 13%
Researcher 6 11%
Student > Postgraduate 5 9%
Student > Ph. D. Student 4 8%
Student > Master 3 6%
Other 7 13%
Unknown 21 40%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 8 15%
Nursing and Health Professions 8 15%
Sports and Recreations 4 8%
Social Sciences 3 6%
Psychology 2 4%
Other 4 8%
Unknown 24 45%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 32. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 29 May 2022.
All research outputs
#1,127,620
of 23,742,253 outputs
Outputs from BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
#174
of 3,721 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#24,286
of 420,176 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
#3
of 70 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,742,253 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,721 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 420,176 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 70 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.