Reliability of the Iranian Version of Mini-Mental State Pediatric Examination (MMSPE): Children's Cognitive Screening Tool

This study aimed to prepare an Iranian version Of the Persian language and determine the reliability of the Mini-Mental State Pediatric Examination (MMSPE).

The Examination was translated into Persian language, and the instructions for its implementation. Some questions were changed to harmonize with the linguistic features and achieve Face validity. The research sample consisted of 40 children with behavioral problems of internalization and externalization and 100 children without these problems with an age range of 7 to 12 years who were selected by available sampling method according to the inclusion criteria. The research tools included The Child Behavior Checklist -Teacher Report Form (CBCL-TRF) of Achenbach & Rescorla (2001) and (MMSPE) of Scarpa and colleagues (2017).

The results of Mini-Mental State Pediatric Examination (MMSPE) in a healthy population of 38 total scores, between 24 - 38 with a mean of 34.16 and a standard deviation of 2.79, and a population with problems, between 8 - 27 and with a mean of 18.4 And the standard deviation of 4.97 was obtained. The discriminant validity was based on an independent t-test, and with 95% confidence was observed a significant difference between the cognitive performances of the two groups. In determining the internal reliability of the test, Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole test was 0.92.

It seems that the Iranian version of (MMSPE) has good capability and reliability and is effective for cognitive screening and prognosis of various psychological and neuropsychological problems in children.