Investigation on factors affecting motor competency of 7-10 years old children using Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC2)

Motor competency refers to ability of children to perform wide range of fine and gross motor activities. Children with low motor competency, might mostly face to many unsuccessful situation and may experience and develop a lots of problems in their life. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of some selected factors including age, birth order, social status and contribution in outdoor physical activity program on motor competency of 7–10 years old children using movement assessment battery for children–second edition (MABC2) which is a one of the most valid assessment tools for assessing motor competency. 

Five hundred and three (girls=244, boys=259) 7–10 years old children from the Arak city (Markazi province, Center of Iran) were participated in this cross sectional study. Inclusion and exclusion criteria of this study were as follow; lack of any developmental, neurological and learning difficulties, which may impair their typical performances. In addition, children without demographic data were excluded from the data set. Asked from parents to fill out the demographic questionnaire (data including; age, gender, level of parents` education, birth order and sibling and level of outdoor physical activities of children). In addition, written consent of parents was obtained. After collecting demographic data, testing started. Three well experienced examiners in the field of children` motor skills performed testing. All the requirement of testing instructions based on MABC2 manual was observed. Children, having trouser and shoes, were tested individually with MABC2 in a quiet room. When testing completed, we analyzed the data. Ojari et al. (2018) reported psychometric properties of MABC2 that the properties are acceptable in Iran. The proposed 3 factors structure was confirmed and intra and interrater reliability were (0.93–0.99) and (0.45 – 0.85) respectively. Descriptive statistic as well as multivariate analysis of variance (one–way MANOVA) were used to analyzing the data. Significant level was set at 0.05 and all analysis was carried out using SPSS 21 for Windows (SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA).

multivariate ANOVA showed there was statistically significant differences of factors age (F=7.16, p<0.001) and birth order (F=2.621, p<0.001), however, no statistically differences were found for the outdoor physical activity (F=1.487, p=0.218) and social status (F=1.74, p=0.158). The effect size of age and birth order were 0.14 and 0.016 respectively, which indicate large and negligible importance. When age increased, performance of children improved dramatically so that in most tasks 9 and 10 years old children were superior to younger children. The result of multivariate analysis also showed that statistical differences in birth order factor was only because of differences in manual dexterity sub–component. 

Age is considered as an important and effective factor on children` motor competency. MABC2 is able to differentiate age group very well. Improved coordination and performance during childhood is due to integration of sensory–motor systems. Of other factors, only the birth order showed a statistically differences, however, that was not large enough to be considered practically important. This study should be duplicated by another similar tools assessment to find out whether lack of non–statistical differences is attributed to poor influence of related factors or poor differentiate ability of MABC2.