Determining the minimum number of strides to accurately measure dual-task walking gait in older adult fallers and non-fallers

This research sought to determine the minimum number of walking strides required to reliably measure single-task (ST) gait, dual-task DT) gait as well as ST-DT difference scores in older adult fallers and non-fallers. We found that for almost all metrics the minimum number of strides required to accurately quantify DT gait measures was 30 strides for non-fallers and fallers. Additionally, for mean gait measures, only 10 strides were required to result in highly reliable measurements, while measures of variability required at least 30 strides. Further, we found that few variables were able to discriminate fallers from non-fallers regardless of the stride count.