Assessment of Validity of Children’s Movement Skill Quotient (CMSQ) Based on the Physical Education Classroom Environment

Abstract

The development of movement skills in children is a critical element in promoting physical activity and other positive health trajectories over their lifetime. A reliable and valid assessment tool is essential for evaluating children’s movement skills in daily physical education environments. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of Children’s Motor Skills Quotient (CMSQ) used in the classroom setting. Six raters conducted evaluation to participants, and a total of 734 children completed all the test items and were included in the study. Descriptive statistics and Rasch analysis were used in this study. The descriptive statistics were mainly used for calculating the mean, standard deviation, percentage, and internal consistency coefficient. Rasch analysis was used to verify the fitting statistics, project difficulty, and functional differences of the items of the CMSQ. The findings showed that the CMSQ met the assumption of the Rasch model, including the unidimensionality, local independence, person measure, and item difficulty hierarchy. The CMSQ also demonstrated adequate interrater reliability and internal consistency. The differential item functioning (DIF) demonstrated a few items showing different probabilities across sex and age. To maintain the item difficulty hierarchy of the CMSQ, no items were deleted. Overall, the CMSQ seems to have appropriate test items with an appropriate rating scale structure for measuring 6-9-year-old children’s movement skills in the physical education classroom environment.

Early Environmental and Biological Influences on Preschool Motor Skills: Implications for Early Childhood Care and Education

“…Furthermore, this instrument, according to the recommendations of the most recent literature (Palmer et al, 2021), considers process-oriented motor skills assessment (how a movement is performed) and product-oriented assessment (the outcome of a movement). To date, product-based measures are the most common (Chang et al, 2020), with very few studies using both product-and process-based assessments to measure preschool motor skills (Szeszulski et al, 2021). Our study has addressed this gap.…”

“…All this issues can be also interesting to researchers given comprehensive assessment of children's motor skills is a significant concern in the contemporary child motor research field (Chang et al, 2020).…”

“…Early motor skills are essential for subsequent physical activity. They are the basis of more advanced, complex, and specialized movements needed to participate in games, sports, and other context-specific physical activity (Chang et al, 2020;Moghaddaszadeh and Belcastro, 2021). Therefore, promoting and obtaining a suitable level of early motor skills is a positive element that may stimulate and enhance the onset and maintenance of physical activity.…”

Measurement Properties of Canadian Agility and Movement Skill Assessment for Children Aged 9–12 Years Using Rasch Analysis

“…A common feature of these assessment tools is that each movement is measured independently, and actions are not connected. These motor skill assessments accurately measure the completion of movements; however, the “real sport situation” is ignored, and the measurement results may deviate from an actual context ( 14 ). Contrary to these traditionally popular assessment tools, the Canadian Agility and Movement Skill Assessment (CAMSA) is the first international closed-loop motor skills assessment tool based on a series of combined movements ( 15 ).…”

“…Despite some studies further confirming the validity of the CAMSA skills assessment instrument ( 2 , 20 ), processing data from the assessment results are inadequate. In particular, as a dichotomous data variable for the results of each CAMSA item, Rasch analysis is an effective method for processing this category of data ( 14 , 24 , 25 ). However, there are currently no studies that have applied Rasch analysis to establish the validity of the CAMSA.…”