Alberta infant motor scale in Brazilian research: a bibliometric study

Abstract

The Alberta infant motor scale (AIMS) is an instrument for assessing the gross motor development of newborns, aged 0-18 months. This study aimed to summarize the Brazilian studies that used the AIMS and identify their objectives to know the main uses of the scale for professionals interested in child motor development. This is a bibliometric study on SciELO, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. The searched keywords were “Alberta infant motor scale” and “Brazil,” with their equivalents in Portuguese and united by “AND.” Inclusion criteria were: use of AIMS with children aged 0-18 months carried out in Brazil. The variables database, journal, year of publication, language, region of the institution linked to the authors, and type of study were analyzed in a descriptive quantitative manner. Content analysis was performed on the objectives described in the articles. In total, 79 articles were included and most of them had a cross-sectional design and were linked to institutions in the South and Southeast regions. Furthermore, most studies were from the last 10 years and in English. The journal Fisioterapia e Pesquisa was the Brazilian journal that most published studies of the sample. The analyzed objectives were distributed into six word classes, with two large groups: psychometric validity (19.1%) and evaluative studies (80.9%). The latter considered the various child populations analyzed. We presented studies that used the AIMS to evaluate the motor development of Brazilian children, reinforcing the importance of this instrument in the national context and also encouraging its use.