Evaluating coordination and balance capacities of youth with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOT-2) was established as a reliable test in evaluating balance and coordination in children without disabilities but has demonstrated poor to moderate reliability in children with intellectual disabilities (ID). Recently a manual has been developed for the BOT-2 specifically for children with ID (revBOT-2). The purpose of this study was to compare reliability and concordance scores of BOT-2 to rev-BOT-2. Forty-eight youths (age = 13.6 + 3.6; 31 males, 17 females) with ID performed eight evaluations on two different days with 3-4 weeks between evaluations. Significant (p<0.05) Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) were seen for 7 of the 8 tests and Cronbach's Alpha indicated 5 tests to be acceptable to excellent (>0.6), 1 test poor (0.51), and 2 tests unacceptable (<0.5) for reliability of test scores. The rev-BOT-2 improved reproducibility and reliability in evaluating these outcome measures for children with ID.