THE MOVEMENT ASSESSMENT BATTERY FOR CHILDREN - A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF ITS USEFULNESS IN JAPAN

The aim of this study was to examine the suitability of the Movement A ssessment Battery for Children (Henderson and Sugden, 1992) for use wi th Japanese children. One hundred and thirty three Japanese children a ged seven to eleven years participated in the study. Their performance was compared to the American children of the same age on whom the 199 2 standardisation was based. Analysis of the individual test items rev ealed a number of significant differences between the samples, some fa vouring Japanese children others favouring American. Post hoc examinat ion of those test items that best distinguished Japanese from American children showed that the items favouring the Japanese children tended to be in the dynamic balance section of the test and those favouring American in the manual dexterity section. Approximately nineteen perce nt of children in the Japanese sample obtained total scores lying two or more standard deviations below the American means. It would be prem ature to ascribe all the obtained differences to cultural factors. Dat a from a larger and more broadly based sample of Japanese children wil l be necessary to provide a more appropriate basis for making decision s about the usefulness of the Movement ABC test items and published no rms. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.