Validity and reliability of Meu Educativo®: A new tool to assess fundamental movement skills in school‐aged children

Abstract

ObjectivesThere is evidence showing that children's proficiency in fundamental movement skills (FMS) is positively related to weight status, physical activity, fitness levels, cognitive development, as well as academic performance. Yet, the feasibility of FMS assessment is challenging, especially with relatively large samples of children. This article presents a new tool named Meu Educativo® to assess children's FMS levels, including its validity and reliability.MethodsWe relied on the validity evidence approach based on test content to develop the FMS assessment checklist and the rating system with a team of experts. In this article, we used five FMS (stationary dribbling, kick, overhand throw, catch the ball, and underhand roll). Further, we conducted a series of reliability studies and used percent agreement and Cohen's kappa (κ) as statistics.ResultsExperts agreed highly on the checklist's components in the five FMS. Inter‐rater reliability ranged from 0.63 for stationary dribbling to 0.93 for overhand throw, and the intra‐rater reliability ranged from 0.46 to 0.94.ConclusionBased on the first results, Meu Educativo® was not only easy to use, but was also a reliable tool for FMS assessments. Notwithstanding the need for future studies, Meu Educativo® is a new tool that can be used by teachers, coaches, and motor development specialists dealing with school‐aged children and researchers working with large samples.

Fundamental Stability Skills: Reliability Analysis Using the Alfamov Assessment Tool

“…The reliability data in the last study [52] were reflected in the absolute value of its ICC, without taking into account the confidence intervals, which may explain why they obtained higher values than in our study. Although the values obtained vary for each skill, the overall score is moderate-to-good as previously mentioned, which is consistent with similar test-retest studies assessed in locomotor and manipulative skills using statistical descriptors similar to ours [43,44,54,55].…”

“…In terms of intrarater reliability, the existing literature on stability FMS is particularly limited compared to studies focusing on interrater and test-retest reliability. Moreover, the previous studies examining intrarater reliability have involved expert raters [43][44][45], whereas our study analyzed two raters, one novice and one expert. Considering that the purpose is the implementation and use of the motor competence assessment batteries by teachers in charge of elementary schoolchildren, our study considered the novice factor that these professionals may have when using batteries to assess reliability.…”

Sleep and fundamental movement skills in primary schoolchildren: The REACT project

“…We also used a highly standardized measurement protocol, the use of objective measurements whenever possible, the use of sleep indicators beyond only sleep duration, and a rigorous quality control program to ensure high‐quality data. The use of a novel technology, Meu Educativo® , to help physical education teachers in planning children's FMS development and its assessment is a key strength because the technology has been shown to be valid, reliable and practical (Garbeloto et al, 2024). However, our results need to be interpreted in light of the following limitations.…”

“…The platform is very intuitive and allows for rating children in three different levels: explorer (beginner performance), adventurous (intermediate performance), and wizard (advanced performance). Although the platform is rather new, data already collected using this assessment method demonstrate adequate validity and reliability (Garbeloto et al, 2024). In addition, physical education teachers reported the high practicality in using this application during their classes.…”

A multivariate multilevel approach to unravel the associations between individual and school factors on children's motor performance in the REACT project

“…We used a new digital platform named Meu Educativo ® to assess FMS, and a detailed description of this platform, namely how it was developed, its validity framework, and reliability can be found elsewhere (Garbeloto et al, 2024). Briefly, the platform was designed to assess object control, locomotor, and stability skills within the classroom setting, research, and clinical practice.…”