Reliability and validity of Handwriting Test for Preschool Children (HT-PRE): A new tool to assess the handwriting ability of preschool children aged 5–6 years old in Mainland China

Background Handwriting ability is related to many neuronal functions, such as visual-perceptual skills, orthographic coding, motor planning and execution, kinesthetic feedback and visual-motor coordination. To date, there is no specific assessment tool for to assess preschool children’s handwriting ability in Mainland China. Our study aimed to develop a tool to assess the handwriting ability of children aged 5–6 years old in Mainland China and to analyze its reliability and validity. Methods The investigation comprised three phases: 1) original tool generation, 2) tool revision, 3) reliability analysis (i.e., interrater, test-retest) and validity analysis (i.e., content, criterion). Results The sample included a total of 482 children. The internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) was 0.74. The test-retest correlation coefficients ranged from 0.38 to 0.80. As expected, our data showed an improving trend in handwriting, and differences in respect to age and gender. When compared with the ‘handwriting difficulty’ group, each subtest score of children in the ‘normal’ group showed significant differences (p < 0.05). The correlation validity, compared with the visual-motor integration development test (VMI), was 0.17–0.52. Conclusion The Handwriting Test for Preschool Children (HT-PRE), which is a newly developed handwriting screening tool for preschool children aged 5–6 years old in Mainland China, has displayed a very good internal consistency, acceptable test-retest reproducibility, and good criterion-based validity, and has also shown good application prospects for handwriting difficulty screening in a clinical setting.