| Keywords |
Sweating ; Active Sweat glands ; Reliability ; Sweat rate ; Validity ; Body temperature ; Starch-iodine paper |
| Abstract |
The present study was aimed to assess the reliability of the Starch-Iodine method to count the number of active sweat glands (ASGs). A total of 192 samples was obtained from four body regions of eight subjects during 60- min leg immersion in 42oC water. Six raters participated in counting the number of ASGs using all the 192 samples (3 times (20, 40 and 60 min) * 4 sites (forehead, back, arm and hand) * 2 trials * 8 subjects). The results showed that 1) ASGs were the greatest on the forehead followed by the back, hand and forearm; 2) The number of ASGs from the six raters was on average 36±8 glands·cm?2 [min. 26 ~ max. 45]; 3) Correlation coefficients (r) between six raters were minimum .843 (p<.001) and maximum .941 (p<.001), which were both considered as being high enough; 4) Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) in ASGs between six raters was .830 on average, which was classified as a good reliability between raters; and 5) ICCs was affected by the number of ASGs. A reliability was relatively low when the number of ASGs was a lower level (approximately below 10 glands·cm-2) because several raters were con- fused at counting light, faint and fine spots, and a reliability between raters was relatively high when the number of ASGs was great enough (approximately 50~100 glands·cm-2). For this reason, ASGs in the latter period than initial period of sweating, and on the head region than extremities might show greater reliabilities in the number of ASGs between raters. |