Design and development of a universal OMNI exertion faces scale.
Amy Schlessman, Rick Wickstrom, Chris Petrosino, Robert Robertson
A design note describing a new visual exertion scale.
No participants, no outcomes, no validation data — formal testing is planned as a separate study.
What this paper is
This is a technical note describing the design process and features of a new version of the OMNI Exertion Faces Scale, a visual tool for rating perceived exertion. It reports no participants, no outcomes, and no validation data. The authors state that formal psychometric validation is planned as a separate study. There is no finding here to change practice on.
Declared interests
Three of the four authors (Wickstrom, Schlessman, Robertson) developed the scale described in the paper. Robertson, the original OMNI creator, passed away in November 2025; this was his last research contribution. No funding source is stated.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the OMNI Faces Scale as a validated tool — the authors explicitly state that formal psychometric validation is planned as a separate study and that no reliability or validity data exist yet.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →