Psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ-Italian)
Introduction
During the last two decades there has been a growing interest in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) (Visser, 2003, Blank et al., 2012). These children, who face inadequate motor skills in daily life without evidence of an underlying neurological disorder, represent about 5–10% of the school-aged population (Zwicker, Missiuna, Harris, & Boyd, 2012). Children with DCD may limit physical activities and sports, reach poor academic achievements and have low self-worth, anxiety and depression (Piek et al., 2008, Fitzpatrick and Watkinson, 2003).
DCD represents a life-long risk factor and early identification is necessary to deal adequately with the problem at an early stage and to intervene with specific programmes. The timely identification of DCD has been recommended by several authors (Cairney et al., 2007, Schoemaker et al., 2006) but proper screening tools for this use are still not globally shared between professionals in the field. Motor coordination testing is often too time consuming and expensive for population screening and cannot be used for purposes of early identification.
An economic and efficient tool for screening children is represented by parent and/or teacher questionnaires and the results can then be confirmed by more specific motor coordination tests.
One parent report instrument is the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ) composed of 15 items (Wilson et al., 2009). It has been designed in Canada as a rapid motor screening tool for children aged 5–15 years and has been validated in several countries (Schoemaker et al., 2006, Martini et al., 2011, Tseng et al., 2010, Salamanca et al., 2012, Kennedy-Behr et al., 2013). The DCDQ correlates well with specific motor tests (i.e. Movement Assessment Battery for Children, M-ABC, Henderson and Sugden, 1982) and achieves high discriminate function (Wilson et al., 2009).
The adapted Italian version of the DCDQ achieves satisfactory internal consistency and reliability (Caravale, Baldi, Gasparini, & Wilson, 2014).
The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the DCDQ-Italian in a school population sample of children aged 5–12 years using the M-ABC as criterion standard for diagnosis of DCD.
Section snippets
The Italian version of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ-Italian)
The DCDQ-Italian is a 15-item parent questionnaire designed to screen for coordination disorders in children aged 5–15 years. Parents are asked to answer on a five-point Likert scale when comparing motor performance between their child and peers. Each item is scored from 1 to 5 points, giving a total score of 15–75 points. The total score indicates whether the child is in the group of children with “indication of, or suspect for, DCD” (lower scores), or “probably not DCD” (higher score) with
Results
Eighty children scored on DCDQ-Italian as “indication of, or suspect for, DCD (DCDQ+)” according to the Canadian normative sample for age range and 68 of them agreed to receive motor testing (response rate 85%). From those scored on the DCDQ-Italian as “probably not DCD” (DCDQ-), 60 children were randomly selected for motor testing and 49 agreed to receive it (response rate 82%).
Discussion
The present research described the psychometric properties of a parent questionnaire designed for identifying children with DCD in a convenience school sample of almost 700 Italian children aged 5–12. A previous study (Caravale et al., 2014) demonstrated that the questionnaire adapted for the Italian language and culture was a valid tool for assessing motor performance in a clinical population and in typically developing children.
CFA analysis confirmed the three factor structure as the original
Conflict of interest
Authors do not declare any financial competing interests.
Acknowledgments
The Authors wish to thank Marcella Caputi, Anna Paolillo, Giulia Parodi, Michela Nunzi, Camilla Latronico e Maria Stabile for their help in collecting high-quality data and the children and the families in both Rome and Pavia who participated in this study.
The research advice of Brenda Wilson was appreciated.
This study was partially supported by University Funding ‘Ricerca di Ateneo year 2012’ from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
References (32)
- et al.
Cross-cultural adaptation, reliability and predictive validity of the Italian version of Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ)
European Journal of Paediatric Neurology
(2014) - et al.
Clinical and research diagnostic criteria for developmental coordination disorder: A review and discussion?
Human Movement Science
(2001) - et al.
Evaluation of the Japanese version of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire as a screening tool for clumsiness of Japanese children
Research in Developmental Disabilities
(2011) - et al.
Psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire in community-based children
Research in Developmental Disabilities
(2010) - et al.
Can the movement assessment battery for children-test be the gold standard for the motor assessment of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder?
Research in Developmental Disabilities
(2011) Developmental coordination disorder: A review of research on subtypes and comorbidities
Human Movement Science
(2003)- et al.
Developmental coordination disorder: A review and update
European Journal of Paediatric Neurology
(2012) - et al.
An empirical comparison of permutation methods for tests of partial regression coefficients in a linear model
Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation
(1999) - et al.
European academy for childhood disability (EACD): Recommendations on the definition, diagnosis and intervention of developmental coordination disorder (long version)
Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology
(2012) - et al.
Developmental coordination disorder and cardiorespiratory fitness in children
Pediatric Exercise Science
(2007)
Motor skills of typically developing adolescents: Awkwardness or improvement?
Physical & Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics
A comparison of diagonal weighted least squares robust estimation techniques for ordinal data
Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal
MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventories: User's guide and technical manual
The lived experience of physical awkwardness: Adults’ retrospective views
Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly
An empirical evaluation of alternative methods of estimation for confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data
Psychological Methods
Movement assessment battery for children-2: Movement ABC-2: examiner's manual
Cited by (21)
Cross-cultural validation of the Arabic version of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire DCDQ’07, in a Lebanese sample of children
2021, Research in Developmental DisabilitiesCitation Excerpt :Our Cronbach’s alpha values are in line with international studies supporting that the DCDQ is a reliable screening tool (Caravale et al., 2014; Kennedy-Behr et al., 2013; Martini et al., 2011; Nowak 2016; Patel & Gabbard 2017; Prado et al., 2009). The factor analysis confirmed the original structure of the questionnaire, which is in line with the findings of Caravale et al. (2015) and Montes-Montes et al. (2020). The results indicate that motor coordination is a multifactorial construct.
Risk of Developmental Coordination Disorder in Italian very preterm children at school age compared to general population controls
2019, European Journal of Paediatric NeurologyCitation Excerpt :For the validation study, the parents of potential participants were informed about the aims and methods by researchers and teachers through meetings at school and/or individual contacts. Upon agreement to participate, they were asked to complete the DCDQ-Italian together with a questionnaire on child development, including questions on diagnosed specific neurodevelopmental disorders (such as language and learning disorders, ADHD).27 For the purpose of this study, we excluded from the VP sample cases of cerebral palsy or other movement limiting conditions such as asymmetrical lower limbs and feet malformations (N = 58 and 6 respectively), severe vision or hearing problems (N = 18 and 7 respectively) and cognitive disability (N = 37 with cognitive score <70 and N = 7 with diagnosed autism spectrum disorder).
The reliability and validity of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire'07 for children aged 4-6 years in mainland China
2015, Research in Developmental DisabilitiesCitation Excerpt :The results are inconsistent with those for the English version in European or American nations (Caravale, Baldi, & Gasparini, 2014; Prado et al., 2009). However when single items were considered separately, the stability of the two items ‘learning new skills’ and ‘quick and competent’ were unexpectedly unsatisfactory, which is inconsistent with other studies (Caravale et al., 2015; Kennedy-Behr et al., 2013). Further research is needed to explore the stability of these two items in the Chinese version of the DCDQ’07.
The Relationships between Self-Reported Motor Functioning and Autistic Traits: The Italian Version of the Adult Developmental Coordination Disorders/Dyspraxia Checklist (ADC)
2023, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health