Use of the Bruininks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency for identifying children with motor impairment

Abstract

This study compared the consistency of the Short Form (SF) and the Long Form (LF) of the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOTMP) in identifying preschool children with motor impairment (MI). One hundred and forty-four Greek preschool children participated (74 males, 70 females; mean age 5y 2mo [SD 5mo], range 4y 6mo-5y 6mo). Although total SF and LF scores were highly correlated (r=0.85), paired t-tests indicated significant differences (t=-27.466, p=0.001). SF total scores (mean 58.72 [SD 7.28]) were higher than LF total scores (mean 47.38 [SD 9.43]). SF had low sensitivity (13.6%) and negative predictive value (72.5%) for identifying MI. The BOTMP-SF does not appear to be a valid test for the identification of MI in 5-year-old children.

Motor Proficiency in Young Children

“…Descriptive statistics showed that 25% of the tested children had "low motor proficiency," 57% had "average motor proficiency," and 18% had "high motor proficiency". The percentage of children with low motor proficiency in the current study is slightly above that of BOTMP standardization sample (23%; Bruininks, 1978), but well below the percentage (35%) found in the study of Venetsanou et al (2007) in which Greek children of the age of 5 participated. At this point, it should be noted that the above categorization of children's performance must be interpreted with caution, because the suitability of the original BOTMP norms for Greek population has yet to be examined.…”

“…Moreover, Cronbach's alpha was found to be .89. Finally, both the BOTMP-LF and its balance subtest have been used in several studies conducted in Greece (Proviadaki, 2004;Venetsanou & Kambas, 2011;Venetsanou, Kambas, Aggeloussis, Serbezis, & Taxildaris, 2007). A child's performance on the BOTMP-LF can be scored in various ways.…”

Motor assessment of preschool aged children: A preliminary investigation of the validity of the Bruininks–Oseretsky test of motor proficiency – Short form

“…When adding to the present results the findings of our previous study 1 according to which BOTMP-SF does not appear to constitute a valid test for 2 the identification of MI in 5-year-old children (Venetsanou et al, 2007), it is 3 concluded that the suitability of the aforementioned battery for preschool age 4 is questionable. 5…”

Balance in children born prematurely currently aged 6–7

“…Our research confirms the results of McEvoy and Grimmer [25], who found that in children aged 5-12, there is no relationship between gender and the extent of angular movement when standing. On the other hand, there are studies showing that sexual dimorphism affects the process of controlling body posture mainly during puberty [6,13,19,22,26,28,38].…”