Development of a movement questionnaire adapted for Japanese culture for elementary school children.

AIMS:Current tools to evaluate Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) symptoms are not adapted to Japanese cultural and educational contexts. We aimed to develop a new tool, the Developmental Coordination Disorder Checklist (DCDC), that can be applied specifically to elementary school-aged children in Japan, by generating a list of culturally relevant items. METHODS:We designed an 18-item questionnaire that was distributed to parents and teachers of elementary school-aged children. The degree of negative influence on a child's life from their motor ability was estimated using a visual analogue scale (VAS). RESULTS:We analyzed the responses from parents/guardians (n = 1174) and teachers (n = 688) of elementary school children (age range: 75-147 months, 1st-6th grades). An exploratory analysis showed that the DCD items could be divided into three factors: fine motor, gross motor, and catch and throw. Internal consistency reliabilities of each factor and of total DCDC were sufficiently high (all coefficients of Cronbach's alpha: > 0.75). Inter-rater reliability between parent/guardian and teacher was moderate in each sub-score and total DCDC score. Parents/guardians evaluated the degree of difficulty in the fine motor factor more severely than teachers. Total DCDC score was correlated significantly with VAS value (r = 0.545), with each factor in DCDC proving useful in predicting negative impact on daily life. CONCLUSIONS:DCDC is an efficient and culturally relevant assessment tool for DCD symptoms within Japan, particularly for measuring any practical deficits in daily life activities.