Development of a Test to Measure the Quality of Motor Activities of Daily Living in Children with DCD

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) experience impairments
motor difficulties at home and at school, without a general medical condition.
Motor difficulties in daily life are important in the DSM criteria for DCD, and
often form the main reason for referral to therapy. However, at the moment, no
test exists that measures functional motor activities of daily living in
children.

The development of a valid and reliable test intended to measure functional
motor activities in daily life of children with DCD.

The test will be developped based on a literature study (content validity) and
based on opinions of experts (face validity). A pilot version of the test will
be assessed to 3 children, to assess usability of the test. After that, the
test will be assessed to a group of children with DCD and a group typically
developing children. The performances of the children in the pilot test will be
compared to their performances on de Movement-ABC, the golden standard in motor
assessments, and to two commonly used and relevant questionnairs, the DCDQ and
the GMO (construct validity). Further, the test-retest reliability and inter
observer agreement will be tested. Finally, a factor analysis will show the
factor structure. Based on these results, the definite version of the test will
be constructed.

The children diagnosed with DCD are already in therapy. The M-ABC, the DCDQ and
the GMO are already assessed. The activities of this test are normally
practiced during therapy, although they are assessed systematically and
standardised during the test. Participation in this study does not change the
content of a normal therapy, no extra burdens are related to participation.
For the typically developping children, participation will mean extra effort.
However, for the development of the test, this group is necessary because the
test needs to differentiate between children with and without DCD. The extra
effort will be small, it takes only one hour.
To perform the test, for both groups, means to perform activities of daily
living that are known and not new. Participation in this study will therefore
not be an extra risk, compared to a normal day.