Scheduled for Special Populations Free Communications III, Saturday, April 13, 2002, 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM, San Diego Convention Center: Room 7A


Concurrent Validity and Intrarater Reliability of Wood Motor Success Screening Tool for Children with Disabilities

Jiabei Zhang, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI and Dalun Zhang, Clemson University, Clemson, SC

The Wood Motor Success Screening Tool was developed by Barbara L. Wood (1998) for analyzing children’s overall levels of motor ability and specific areas of motor weakness. With this tool, children’s overall motor ability could be identified as one out of six levels, including needs intervention, needs support, needs practice, on age level, above age level, and highly developed, and children’s specific areas of motor weakness could be specified among eight areas, including body awareness, spatial orientation, eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, bilateral intergration, vestibular integration, static balance, and dynamic balance. The creator of this tool believed that the tool could be administered by all, fun to take, quick to administer, evaluate sensory and perceptual areas over time, and be shared by all. However, validity and reliability of this screening tool have not been found in the publications. The purpose of this study was to examine concurrent validity and intrarater reliability of the Wood Motor Success Screening Tool. The participants were 26 children with learning and behavioral disabilities (15 boys, 11 girls), ages from 4 years, 7 months to 9 years 11 months (M=94.72 months, SD=23.50 months). A participant was tested with the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Short Form (criterion measure) and the Wood Motor Success Screening Tool on the same day. The participant was then tested with the Wood Motor Success Screening Tool once again on another day within a week. Data collected were analyzed with Spearman rank order correlation and intraclass correlation. Spearman rank order correlation was used to calculate a concurrent validity coefficient between the criterion measure and the Wood tool, while intraclass correlation was used to calculate a test-retest reliability coefficient between two measures using the Wood tool. Spearman rank order correlation analysis of score ranks of all 26 participants revealed a coefficient of .82 between the criterion measure and the Wood tool, while the intraclass correlation analysis of point scores of all 26 participants revealed a coefficient of .94 between the test and the retest using the Wood tool. These results showed that the Wood Motor Success Screening Tool was a valid and reliable instrument for determining the overall levels of motor ability and specific areas of motor weakness for children with learning and behavioral disabilities. Since the sample used in this preliminary study was small, it was recommended that the results of this study be extended and replicated in the future studies.
Keyword(s): adapted physical activity, assessment, measurement/evaluation

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