An investigation of the convergent validity of the movement asessment battery for children-2 and the McCarron assessment of neuromuscular development within an ecologically valid environment

The convergent validity of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) and the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND) in an ecologically valid environment Laura Cronin Purpose: To investigate reliability and validity of the MABC-2 and the MAND in 7-9 year old children in mainstream schools. Relevance: Poor motor skill development is a growing problem with children as physical, emotional and social co-morbidities can occur simultaneously or sequentially (Kaplan et al. 1998, Chen et al. 2009, Missiuna et al. 2007). As early detection is vital, ecologically valid, psychometrically robust assessments should be implemented within the child‟s natural environment. Participants: 114 7-9 year old children participated in the validation study. 20 children aged 7-9 years participated in the reliability study. Method: Reliability Study: Children were assessed on two occasions, two weeks apart within their normal school environment. On the first occasion each child was scored by two raters (inter-rater reliability) and on the second occasion the child was re-assessed by the first rater (intra-rater reliability). Validation study: Counterbalanced administration of the MABC-2 and the MAND to children within their normal school environment. Analysis: Intraclass correlations and limits of agreement were utilised to determine the reliability of the MABC-2. Correlations and case agreement were used to determine the validity of the MAND and the MABC-2. Performance of motor impaired children was compared to normally developing peers to determine which aspects of each test were good at discriminating between groups. Results: MABC-2 has excellent inter- and moderate intra-rater reliability within this population. The MABC-2 and MAND have a large positive relationship; however there is a lot of independence between both tests. The case agreement between both tests in identifying children with motor impairments was poor (12.5%). Manual Dexterity was good at discriminating normally developing children from motor impaired children. Conclusions: A lot of independence and poor case agreement exists between both assessments. Some aspects of the assessments are stronger than others at differentiating motor impaired children from their typically developing peers. Implications: It is vital that motor assessments can be implemented within the child‟s natural environment. Both of these assessments can be effectively implemented in groups within a school setting and can be very useful in identifying children with poor motor development; however the poor agreement between assessments highlights the necessity for a gold standard assessment which can be used as a criterion measure