Aspects of the validity of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children

Does the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC) measures what it claims to measure? The concurrent validity of the total impairment score and some of the item scores of the second and third age band of the M-ABC test were investigated. One hundred thirty three children, between 7- and 9-year-old, were assessed with the M-ABC test, a ball catching test and two tasks measuring dynamic balance. Ninety of these children were identified as children with a poor ball catching skill and 43 children were typically developing children. One hundred and seven children were assessed with the second age band of the M-ABC (the 7- and 8-year-old children) and 26 with the third age band (the 9-year-old children). The results of the correlation analysis between the ball catching test, the two dynamic balance tasks and the corresponding items of the M-ABC, varied from non-significant to a highly significant correlation coefficient of -0.74. For some items concurrent validity was established but other items seemed less valid, probably due to a lack of discriminative power. The concurrent validity of the total impairment score of the M-ABC was confirmed for the second age band. Correlation coefficients between the ball catching test, the dynamic balance skills and the M-ABC varied between -0.72 and -0.76. The results for the third age band have to be interpreted with prudence because they were based on only 26 children.