Reliability and agreement of a novel portable laser height metre

BACKGROUND: Human height is a simple measure with great applicability. Usually, stadiometers are used to measure height accurately. However, these may be impractical to transport and expensive. Therefore, we developed a portable and low-cost laser height metre (LHM).

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to (1) determine intrarater and interrater reliability of our LHM and compare it to a wall-fixed stadiometer, (2) examine its agreement with the same stadiometer, and (3) determine the minimum number of recordings needed to obtain an accurate and reliable height measurement using the LHM.

METHODS: We recruited 32 participants (18+ years)-both men and women. Two raters performed assessments on the same day blinded to each other and their reference standard measurements. We calculated intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), coefficient of variation (CV), standard error of measurement (SEM), and Bland-Altman plots with limits of agreement (LOA).

RESULTS: For both the LHM and stadiometer, we found ICC values of 0.99-1.00 (95% CI: 0.997-1.000) for both intrarater and interrater reliability. Regarding LHM intrarater reliability, SEM, CV, and LOA were 0.34 cm, 0.16%, and -1.07 to 0.73 cm, respectively. In terms of LHM interrater reliability, SEM, CV, and LOA were 0.27 cm, 0.12%, and -0.32 to 0.84 cm, respectively. As to agreement with stadiometers using one measurement, the mean difference was -0.14 cm and LOA ranged from -0.81 to 0.77 cm.

CONCLUSION: A portable and low-cost LHM, for measuring body height once, showed an excellent reproducibility within and between raters along with an acceptable agreement with a stadiometer thereby representing a suitable alternative.