Differences between Young Children’s Actual, Self-perceived and Parent-perceived Aquatic Skills

Abstract

As drowning is a leading cause of unintentional injury/death in children worldwide, perceptions of their actual aquatic skills are of critical importance. Children’s self-perceptions may influence the risks they take, and parental perceptions may influence the degree of supervision deemed to be necessary for children in and around water. Accordingly, we examined the differences between young children’s actual, self-perceived and parent-perceived aquatic skills. Using a three-way repeated measures ANCOVA, we analyzed data from 134 child-parent dyads (56.0% boys; M age = 7.1, SD = 1.1 years; and 71.6% mothers). We measured self and parental perceptions of the child’s aquatic skills with the ‘Pictorial Scale of Perceived Water Competence’ (PSPWC), and we applied the exact same 17 test items of the PSPWC to assess the child’s actual aquatic skill level in the water. Controlling for years of swimming school experience, within-subject differences between the total scores on the ‘Actual Aquatic Skills Test’ (AAST) and both the child- and parent-completed PSPWC indicated lower than actual estimates of the children’s aquatic skill level. The degree of disagreement against the AAST was more pronounced in parents than in 6-7 year-old children but was similar between parents and 8-9 year-old children, with these patterns being evident regardless of the children’s sex. Our study contributes to an ongoing validation of the PSPWC and represents a key advance in assessing and comparing children’s actual and perceived aquatic skill competence, using perfectly aligned instruments. Future research and practice might explore children’s actual aquatic skills in different contexts (e.g., open water), include perspectives of non-parent caregivers and assess perceived and actual water competence across development.

The Inter-Rater and Intra-Rater Reliability of the Actual Aquatic Skills Test (AAST) for Assessing Young Children’s Motor Competence in the Water

“…A promising new tool for assessing young children’s actual aquatic skill level that has yet to be proven reliable and valid, is the Actual Aquatic Skills Test (AAST), first administered by D’Hondt et al (2021) [ 23 ]. The AAST [ 23 ] was based on transferring the 17 aquatic skills or test items included in the Pictorial Scale for Perceived Water Competence (PSPWC) [ 24 ] to an actual performance by the child in the water of an indoor swimming pool. Each of these 17 aquatic skills has to be assessed based on three possible levels of execution.…”

“…For each level, a pictogram and corresponding performance criteria have been described in the PSPWC manual of Morgado et al (2020) [ 24 ]. The derived AAST [ 23 ] is a tool worth investigating for a number of reasons, as elaborated below.…”

“…First, to the best of our knowledge and also according to other authors [ 23 , 25 , 26 ], there are currently only a few validated instruments available for assessing (pre)school children’s actual aquatic skills, which is in sharp contrast to the wide variety of assessment tools available for evaluating their actual level of motor competence on land [ 25 , 27 , 28 , 29 ]. To date, the majority of research investigating water competence in children, and more specifically their aquatic skills, is based on self-reported or parent proxy-reported estimates thereof [ 3 , 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

“…This approach is generally found to be less labor-intensive and time-consuming than actually assessing children’s aquatic skill level in the water [ 30 , 33 , 34 ]. Nonetheless, it is known that both children’s self-perception as well as the parental perception of children’s level of (aquatic) skills are not always in accordance with reality [ 23 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Estevan et al (2017) [ 36 ], for example, only found weak to moderate positive relationships between children’s actual skill level (on land) and their self-perception as well as the parental perception and the perception of physical education teachers, with the children themselves being the most inaccurate when estimating their own skill level.…”

“…Third, the content of the AAST [ 23 ] aligns perfectly with that of the PSPWC [ 24 ], allowing research such as that of D’Hondt and colleagues [ 23 ], who examined the relationship between the actual and the self- and parent-perceived aquatic skill level of children. According to Stallman et al (2017) [ 3 ], a vital element of water competence is the individual’s ability to accurately estimate their own actual aquatic skill level.…”