Objective: To assess the validity and reliability of Family Environment Scale on Motor Development for Urban Pre-school Children (FESMDUPC) so as to provide valid and reliable tools for measuring the influencing factors from home environment on motor development of the children.
Methods: One thousand eight hundreds and twenty four preschool children from 15 kindergartens in Suzhou city were included in this study which related to reliability and validity of FESMDUPC. Data on test-retest reliability, internal consistent reliability, content validity and construct validity were assessed using the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC), Cronbach α coefficient, Item-level content validity index (I-CVI) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). When the Observation for Measurement of the Environment Revisited was used as criteria, the criteria-related validity of MABC was assessed, using the Spearman correlation analysis.
Results: This study showed that the ICC of all items was above or close to 0.9. The total Cronbach α coefficient was 0.875 and the Cronbach α coefficient was 0.868-0.873 when each item was deleted. Formal validity and reliability study showed that I-CVI of the 23 items was 0.79-1.00. The average I-CVI was 0.92. Results from the CFA model showed that χ2=1077.5, df=224 and χ2/df=4.810. Fit of Goodness on the other indices of the model were as follows: GFI (0.949), AGF (0.937), NFI (0.889), CFI (0.896), with each of them above or close to 0.9. The RMSEA was 0.046 which showed that the model's Fit of Goodness could be accepted. The factor loadings were all above 0.3 with statistical significance. However, according to this model, the strengths of relationship between Outside Space, Inside Space and Toy were high, so the high-step CFA of FESMDUPC was further analyzed. The model's Fit of Goodness was good. The factor loadings were all above 0.3 with statistical significance. Results showed that the Spearman Coefficient of the total score of FESMDUPC and HOME scale was 0.476 (each P<0.001). Among them only the learning staff and movement variety were comparatively and highly correlated with Toy, Parental Rearing Patterns. Spearman coefficients were all above 0.3 (each P<0.001).
Conclusion: The above results showed that the reliability of test-retest, the internal consistent reliability, the content validity and the construct validity of FESMDUPC were fair and had met the basic psychometric demands. FESMDUPC could be used as a quantitative tool to assess the motor development among children.