Designing and developing a Comprehensive Scale of Cognitive and Psychomotor Abilities for Children

The aim of this study has been developing a comprehensive, reliable, and valid package for the assessment of cognitive and psychomotor abilities of children. To this end, 661 children were selected using stratified random sampling. They were then divided to six age groups, ranging from 6.5 to 12.5 years old .This study was conducted using the Cross Battery Assessment method in four steps: a) the selection of an axial scale, b) the selection of supplementary scales, c) the conduction of preliminary experimental study, and d) the conduction of the main study and the assessment of the validity and reliability of the final scale.  According to the retest results, the correlation coefficients of the scales ranged between 0.76 (for tactile ability) and 0.98 (for fluid reasoning), indicating the appropriate validity of them. The coefficient of agreement between experts for the content validity of the scales was somewhere between 0.1 and 0.6.  To measure the construct validity through the age discrimination method, multivariate analysis of variance showed significant differences between different age groups in all abilities. In addition, the factor analysis confirmed this three-factor structure, consisting of cognitive and psychomotor abilities, speed, and efficiency.