When Minimal Detectable Change Exceeds a Diagnostic Test–Based Threshold Change Value for an Outcome Measure: Resolving the Conflict

Assessing patient progress is an integral part of physical therapist practice. In an attempt to assist clinical decision making regarding a patient's change status, researchers have offered study-based threshold change values. Often researchers have provided reliability and diagnostic test-based estimates of threshold change values obtained from the same patient sample. A potential dilemma occurs when the reliability (ie, the minimal detectable …