Jornal Internacional de Medicina Física e Reabilitação
Acesso livre

Abstrato

Reliability and Validity of the Revised Individualized Structured Mastery Tasks in Children with Developmental Delay

Pei-Jung Wang, George A. Morgan, Hua-Fang Lia.o, Li-Chiou Chen, Ai-Wen Hwang and Lu Lu

Objective: Mastery motivation is an under-assessed resiliency factor that helps all children achieves their potential; it impels children to strive to master skills and to solve challenging problems. Because children with developmental delay (DD) are perceived to have lower motivation than children with typical development, it is important to have good behavioural measures of mastery motivation. This research describes psychometric properties of the revised individualized structured mastery tasks (ISMT-R), a behavioral assessment, which was updated based on empirical and theoretical feedback. The purposes of this study were: to examine the test-retest, inter-rater and inter-coding reliabilities of the ISMT-R and the relationships between the ISMT-R and both the Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire (DMQ 18) and developmental ability measured by a standardized developmental test. Method: The design produced a cross-sectional study. Sixty-two mother-child dyads of children with DD aged 23-43 months were recruited. Children were tested with the ISMT-R (puzzles and cause-effect tasks) and the Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers (CDIIT). DMQ 18 was filled out by mothers and produced scores for four persistence scales and mastery pleasure scale. Intraclass Correlation coefficient was used to examine reliabilities, and correlation analysis was used to estimate the validities (α=0.05; two-tailed). Results: The ISMT-R had well to excellent test-retest, inter-rater and inter-coding reliabilities. Children’s persistence at moderately difficult tasks positively correlated with the predicted dimensions of the maternal ratings of the child’s persistence on the DMQ 18 and the child’s development based on the CDIIT. Conclusion: The ISMT-R has acceptable reliability and convergent validity, and can be a useful tool for assessing mastery motivation of children with DD. It also can be used in clinical settings to help clinicians distinguish between motivation and developmental ability for each child with DD.