The Early Motor Questionnaire revisited: Starting points, standardized scores, and stability

Abstract

Motor skills are an important aspect of development during infancy and have been found to predict development in other domains. Therefore, fast and reliable assessments of infant motor skills are needed. The current study revisited a time and cost-effective parent-report measure of infants’ motor skills—the Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ)—and aimed to improve the utility of the EMQ as a tool to examine variability, stability, and individual differences in early motor development. A sample of 446 parents of infants provided a total of 775 EMQ responses for analyses. Using this large sample, regression was used to create age-independent scores for global, gross motor, fine motor, and perception–action scores on the EMQ. Age-adjusted scores were then converted to t-scores to facilitate score interpretation for past and future studies using the EMQ. Finally, starting flags for different age groups were created to decrease the time it takes parents to complete the EMQ. Together, these changes to the EMQ will improve the utility and interpretability of the measure. The EMQ is free to use and available in the supplemental materials or via www.onlinebabylab.com/emq.