Development and Validation of a Tool for Assessing Pre-Writing Skills of 2-5 y old Children

OBJECTIVES

To develop a tool to assess pre-writing skills of 2-5 y old children in India.

METHODS

The tool development process followed the recommendations by Fitzpatrick et al. and the Consensus based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN), and included 4 phases. In Phase I, an initial 35-item draft tool was developed by an expert panel for the tool-development. In Phase II, the 35-item draft tool was prevalidated through peer and expert reviews, pilot-study to assess the tool-comprehensibility, and assessment of test-retest and inter-rater reliability. In Phase III, the 35-item draft tool was administered on the 575 typically developing children aged 2-5 y, recruited from rural, urban, slum, and coastal areas through stratified random sampling. In Phase IV, the normative age-range for development of each item was generated by calculating the age-percentiles (10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th). Factor analysis and item reduction was done for items in 2-3, 3-4, and 4-5 y age-groups. The final tool was converted to graphic format with 10th-90th age-percentile bars.

RESULTS

The final tool had 26 items with a three-factor structure. Cronbach's alpha was within acceptable limits for all three age-groups (0.723, 0.778, and 0.823 in 2-3 y, 3-4 y, and 4-5 y respectively). Kappa coefficients of the items ranged from 0.6-1 in interrater reliability and 0.64-1 test-retest reliability analysis reflecting substantial agreement between ratings.

CONCLUSIONS

A 26-item screening tool "Prewriting skills Assessment Tool" (PAT) to assess writing readiness of 2-5 y old children was developed. Tool reliability and construct validity have been established.