Teachers’ use of the MABC checklist to identify children with motor difficulties

• Main Author: Junaid, Kathryn Anne
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8163

The purpose of this study was to determine whether teachers could use the Movement Assessment Battery for Children Checklist (MABC Checklist) to identify school age children with motor coordination difficulties. The use of this checklist would enable teachers to select the most appropriate children for referral to occupational and physiotherapy services. In this study teachers completed the MABC Checklist on one hundred and three randomly selected school-aged children whose parents consented to their child's participation. A physiotherapist then administered the Movement Assessment Battery for Children Test (MABC Test) to the same children. The relationship between the teachers' scores on the MABC Checklist and the MABC Test was examined using the Pearson product-moment correlation (one-tailed test)(r = 0.51). The degree of concordance in decision-making between teachers and the physiotherapist identifying the same children with and without motor difficulties was determined by calculating the following characteristics of the checklist scores: sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. The sensitivity at both the fifteenth and fifth cut-off points was low so that many children who had motor problems and those "at risk" for motor problems based on the MABC Test, were not detected using the MABC Checklist. Because of the low sensitivity of the MABC Checklist, it would not be of great value as a screening tool. Further revisions of the MABC Checklist as well as more detailed training in its use would be needed before it could be considered as a screening tool to enable teachers to identify children with motor difficulties.