| Sumario: | Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine pedometer accuracy during slow overground walking in older adults (mean age=63.6 years). Method: A total of 18 participants (6 males, 12 females) wore 5 different brands of pedometers over 3 pre-set cadences that elicited walking speeds between 0.3 and 0.9 m/s and one self-selected cadence over 80 meters of indoor track. Results: Pedometer accuracy decreased with slower walking speeds with mean percent errors across all devices combined of 56%, 40%, 19%, and 9% at cadences of 50, 66, and 80 steps/min, and selfselected cadence, respectively. Percent error ranged from 45.3% for Omron HJ105 to 66.9% for YamaxDigiwalker 200. Due to the high level of error across the slowest cadences of all 5 devices, the use of pedometers to monitor step counts in healthy older adults with slower gait speeds is problematic.Conclusions: Further research is required to develop pedometer mechanisms that accurately measure steps at slower walking speeds.
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