Rater reliability of the adapted scoring criteria of the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment for children with cerebral palsy

Aust Occup Ther J. 2009 Dec;56(6):403-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1440-1630.2009.00804.x.

Abstract

Background/aim: Current handwriting assessment tools are standardised mostly on typically developing students. This study estimated the intrarater and interrater reliabilities of the adapted scoring criteria, titled the Minnesota Handwriting Assessment-Cerebral Palsy (MHA-CP), for evaluating the effectiveness of handwriting interventions for children with cerebral palsy.

Methods: We scored two batches of 20 random samples each from 80 handwriting samples produced by 30 children with cerebral palsy using the MHA-CP to estimate the intrarater and interrater reliabilities, respectively.

Results: Intraclass correlation coefficients exceeded 0.95 for both intrarater and interrater reliabilities for all quality subscales of the MHA-CP.

Conclusions: The MHA-CP is shown to be a reliable measure of the manuscript handwriting performance of children with cerebral palsy who are in Grades 1 and 2. Further empirical testing is recommended to confirm its validity as an outcome measure for this population.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cerebral Palsy / diagnosis*
  • Cerebral Palsy / physiopathology
  • Cerebral Palsy / therapy
  • Child
  • Disability Evaluation*
  • Female
  • Handwriting*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Observer Variation
  • Occupational Therapy / methods*
  • Reproducibility of Results