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Hand and finger dexterity
Purdue Pegboard
Chapter 3 – Methods
The PPT (Purdue Pegboard Model 32020, Lafayette Instrument
Company, Indiana, USA) was used to measure hand and finger dexterity.
The PPT has been shown to be valid and has high test-retest reliability
(ICC – 0.82-0.91) (Desrosiers, Hebert, Bravo, & Dutil, 1995; Tiffin &
Asher, 1948). There is a large pool of normative data, with age and
gender specific values available (Desrosiers, et al., 1995). The test has
been implemented in a number of health outcome trials assessing fine
dexterity (Adler, Hentz, Joyce, Beach, & Caviness, 2002; Müller & Benz,
2002). The PPT has been used in a number of tremor affected
populations, such as ET (A. Rajput, et al., 2004) and PD (Müller & Benz,
2002; Proud & Morris, 2010), and has shown to be able to distinguish ET
patients from non-ET older adults (M. E. Héroux, et al., 2009). It is
sensitive to difference and change, being able to distinguish between
the preferred and non-preferred hands (Triggs, Calvanio, Levine, Heaton,
& Heilman, 2000), injured and non-injured limbs (Skinner & Curwin,
2007) and to improve as a result of interventions such as resistance
training in an older adult population (Kornatz, et al., 2005).
As described by Tiffin and Asher (1948), the PPT requires the participant
to take pegs, one at a time, from the peg-holder at the top of the board
and place them into evenly spaced holes on the board (Lafayette
Instrument Company, 2002). The PPT is a time-based measure and
encompasses four tasks; left hand only, right hand only, both hands and
an assembly task (Figure 6).
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