An App to Assess Young Children’s Perceptions of Movement Competence

Abstract

Assessing young children’s perceptions is commonly done one on one with an interviewer. An app enables several children to complete the scale at once. The objective was to describe an app to assess children’s perceptions of movement competence and then present consistency of child responses. The Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence (PMSC) has fundamental movement skill (FMS; e.g., catch) and play items (e.g., cycling). The PMSC android app has the same items and images but children complete it independently with audio. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) assessed i) test-retest reliability using the PMSC app on 18 items in 42 children (M = 6.8 yrs) and ii) consistency between measures for 13 FMS items in 44 children (M = 8.5 yrs). Over time (M = 6.9 days, SD = 0.35) the full PMSC had good consistency (ICC = 0.79, 95% CI 0.64–0.88) and the FMS items had moderate consistency (ICC = 0.68, 95% CI 0.47–0.81). There was good agreement between the app and interview for FMS items (ICC = 0.86, 95% CI 0.76–0.92). Locomotor items were less consistent. The PMSC app can generally be recommended. Future research could investigate how different forms of digital assessment affect children’s perception.