Fine Motor Test for the School-aged and its relationship with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition in Chinese children with developmental coordination disorder

Aims:
To investigate whether the scores of the newly developed Fine Motor Test for the School-aged (FMTS) are at least moderately correlated with those of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (MABC-2), and to explore the FMTS’s ability to identify children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) compared to the MABC-2.

Methods:
Fifty-one children aged 7-14 years in Hong Kong participated. Each child was assessed with both the MABC-2 and FMTS, and their parents completed the revised Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ-R). DCD was identified using two approaches for comparison. The first approach used the 15th percentile on the MABC-2 combined with DCDQ-R cut-off scores of 15-46 (for ages 5-7), 15-55 (for ages 8-9), or 15-57 (for ages 10-15). The second approach used the 5th percentile on the FMTS combined with the same DCDQ-R cut-off scores. Spearman’s rho correlation analyses were performed.

Results:
Using the DCDQ-R as the reference standard, the Movement ABC-2 identified 7 true positives, 24 false positives, 20 true negatives, and no false negatives. In contrast, the FMTS total scores alone identified 18 true positives, 2 false positives, 18 true negatives, and 13 false negatives. Additionally, weak-to-moderate correlations (rho = 0.41–0.70) were found between the two FMTS subscales and all Movement ABC-2 subtests, except for the ball-related subtest, among children aged 7-10 years.

Conclusions:
This study suggests that the FMTS may demonstrate better sensitivity, aligned with parent-reported DCDQ-R scores, for identifying DCD in Hong Kong children, compared to the Movement ABC-2. As the FMTS exclusively focuses on fine motor difficulties, it may need to be combined with assessments of gross motor skills.