JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY & SPORTS, 2013 Volume 1 Issue 1 34 Table 2. M ABC-2 Group means, standard scores and p- values for test components. Significance was accepted for p < 0.05
Boys (n= 48)
Girls (n=52
________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mean SD Mean SD
p‐value
Aiming & Catching
17,16 4,89
17,09
4,26
0.42
Balance
21,70 8,20
23,43
7,11
0.43
Manual Dexterity
18,96 6,31
22,23
7,34
0.02
M ABC‐2 total
57,84 16,27
62,75
13,25
0.29
7,13
9,27
0.16
Section A+B motor factor 10,06 11,51
Section C non motor factors 3,3 2,04 2,40 1,88
0.01
Table 3. Convergent validity of the M ABC‐2 and Checklist results.
Checklist Results Red Zone Orange Zone
TD* 8 6 M ABC ‐2 Borderline 1 0 results DCD 13 11 Total 22 17 *( TD stands for Typically Developing children)
DCD according to test results outnumbered girls. Children in the sample were randomly selected. The slight difference between the number of boys and girls who partecipated in the study was just a coincidence. Boys-girls ratio in the current study ranges from 1:0,7 regarding children classified with developmental coordination disorder to 1:0,8 concerning children classified at borderline. The small gender difference reported in this study might be due to the life style trends of children. These findings support the fact that boys exhibit movement difficulties more than girls, even though we found no association between gender and motor performance. The current boys-girls ratio is in discordance with systematic findings of a ratio of 4:1 supported in other studies such as (Gibs, et al ., 2007) or 5:1 Kourtessis et al. 2008). Girls performed slightly better on balance, manual dexterity and in the total MABC -2 but significance was reached only in the manual dexterity test. The only test where boys performed a bit better
Green Zone
Total
32 8
46 9
21 61
45 100
than girls was in aiming and catching but this slight difference was not significant. The test results also showed that there are more typically developing girls than boys, and more boys at risk of having DCD. We believe that the discordance between the test and the checklist might have happen due to the fact that parents might not have had enough information so that they did not administer the checklist as it had to, or in some cases they did not tell the truth for their children. This was verified comparing the test performance of a child that was diagnosed with DCD and his own checklist where we would fall in the green zone. We found learning and speech/language to be the variables that could significantly predict the performance in the MABC-2. Another interesting data is that learning and speech/language would significantly predict some other test components too, such as Balance and Manual Dexterity. Aiming & Catching would significantly be predicted by PE/recreational activities and literacy. From the