Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required
Initially designed to identify children's movement impairments in clinical settings, the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) is also widely used to evaluate children's movement in research. Standardised scores on the test are calculated using parametric methods under the as...
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Public Library of Science
2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52046/ |
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| author | French, Blandine Sycamore, Nicole J. McGlashan, Hannah L. Blanchard, Caroline C.V. Holmes, Nicholas P. |
| author_facet | French, Blandine Sycamore, Nicole J. McGlashan, Hannah L. Blanchard, Caroline C.V. Holmes, Nicholas P. |
| author_sort | French, Blandine |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Initially designed to identify children's movement impairments in clinical settings, the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) is also widely used to evaluate children's movement in research. Standardised scores on the test are calculated using parametric methods under the assumption of normally-distributed data. In a pilot study with thirty five 8-10 year old children (i.e., in Age Band 2 of the MABC-2), we found that maximal performance was often reached. These ‘ceiling effects’ created distributions of scores that may violate parametric assumptions. Tests of normality, skew, and goodness-of-fit revealed this violation, most clearly on three of the eight sub-tests. A strong deviation from normality was again observed in a sample of 161 children (8-10 years, Experiment 1), however ceiling effects were reduced by modifying the scoring methods, and administering items designed for older children when maximal performance was reached. Experiment 2 (n=81, 7-10 years) further refined the administration and scoring methods, and again improved the distributions of scores. Despite reducing ceiling effects, scores remained non-parametrically distributed, justifying non-parametric analytic approaches. By randomly and repeatedly resampling from the raw data, we generated non-parametric reference distributions for assigning percentiles to each child's performance, and compared the results with the standardised scores. Distributions of scores obtained with both parametric and non-parametric methods were skewed, and the methods resulted in different rankings of the same data. Overall, we demonstrate that some MABC-2 item scores are not normally-distributed, and violate parametric assumptions. Changes in administering and scoring may partially address these issues. We propose that resampling or other non-parametric methods are required to create new reference distributions to which an individual child's performance can be referred. The modifications we propose are preliminary, but the implication is that a new standardisation is required to deal with the non-parametric data acquired with the MABC-2 performance test. |
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| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-52046 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
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| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:22:54Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| recordtype | eprints |
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| spelling | nottingham-520462020-05-04T19:38:40Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52046/ Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required French, Blandine Sycamore, Nicole J. McGlashan, Hannah L. Blanchard, Caroline C.V. Holmes, Nicholas P. Initially designed to identify children's movement impairments in clinical settings, the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) is also widely used to evaluate children's movement in research. Standardised scores on the test are calculated using parametric methods under the assumption of normally-distributed data. In a pilot study with thirty five 8-10 year old children (i.e., in Age Band 2 of the MABC-2), we found that maximal performance was often reached. These ‘ceiling effects’ created distributions of scores that may violate parametric assumptions. Tests of normality, skew, and goodness-of-fit revealed this violation, most clearly on three of the eight sub-tests. A strong deviation from normality was again observed in a sample of 161 children (8-10 years, Experiment 1), however ceiling effects were reduced by modifying the scoring methods, and administering items designed for older children when maximal performance was reached. Experiment 2 (n=81, 7-10 years) further refined the administration and scoring methods, and again improved the distributions of scores. Despite reducing ceiling effects, scores remained non-parametrically distributed, justifying non-parametric analytic approaches. By randomly and repeatedly resampling from the raw data, we generated non-parametric reference distributions for assigning percentiles to each child's performance, and compared the results with the standardised scores. Distributions of scores obtained with both parametric and non-parametric methods were skewed, and the methods resulted in different rankings of the same data. Overall, we demonstrate that some MABC-2 item scores are not normally-distributed, and violate parametric assumptions. Changes in administering and scoring may partially address these issues. We propose that resampling or other non-parametric methods are required to create new reference distributions to which an individual child's performance can be referred. The modifications we propose are preliminary, but the implication is that a new standardisation is required to deal with the non-parametric data acquired with the MABC-2 performance test. Public Library of Science 2018-06-01 Article PeerReviewed French, Blandine, Sycamore, Nicole J., McGlashan, Hannah L., Blanchard, Caroline C.V. and Holmes, Nicholas P. (2018) Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required. PLoS ONE . ISSN 1932-6203 Methods movement children nonparametric assessment http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198426 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0198426 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0198426 |
| spellingShingle | Methods movement children nonparametric assessment French, Blandine Sycamore, Nicole J. McGlashan, Hannah L. Blanchard, Caroline C.V. Holmes, Nicholas P. Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| title | Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| title_full | Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| title_fullStr | Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| title_full_unstemmed | Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| title_short | Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| title_sort | ceiling effects in the movement assessment battery for children-2 (mabc-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required |
| topic | Methods movement children nonparametric assessment |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52046/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52046/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52046/ |