The inter and intra-rater reliability of age band 2 of the Movement Assessment Battery for children - second edition (MABC2)

Background: The MABC-2 is one of the most widely used outcome measures as means of measuring developmental delay. (Van Waelvelde et al 2006). Despite this, there is little literature surrounding the reliability of the outcome measure. Objectives: To determine the inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of the second age band of the MABC-2 Methods: 11 children (mean age 7.55 years) enrolled in second class of primary education completed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2 on two separate occasions. The results of these two testing sessions were used to calculate inter and intra-rater reliability. Results: Inter-rater reliability The ICC values for the inter-rater reliability were very good with only one task falling below 0.9. One task received an ICC .892, which is still considered excellent reliability. (Portney & Watkins 1993). Intra-rater reliability The ICC values for the intra-rater reliability do not appear as strong as the results for inter-rater reliability. Only two tasks had a reliability that can be considered excellent (>0.9). Three other tasks appear to have moderate intra-rater reliability(.5-.75). All other tasks fell below and ICC of 0.5 indicating poor intra-rater reliability reliability. Conclusions: The MABC-2 appears to have good inter-rater reliability but much poorer intra-rater reliability. Although there were some limitations to the methodology, questions must arise to the quality of an outcome measure if the intra-rater reliability is not seen to be of a high quality.