The development of a short form of the Test of Gross Motor Development‐2 in Brazilian children: Validity and reliability

Background Assessing children's motor skills is important for identifying children with delays, measuring learning, and determining teaching effectiveness. One popular assessment for measuring fundamental motor skills in children is the Test of Gross Motor Development‐2 (TGMD‐2). Although the TGMD‐2 long form is widely known, a short form of the TGMD‐2 has not been yet proposed and investigated. The aim of this study was to develop a short form of the TGMD‐2 and to examine its validity, interrater reliability and test–retest reliability. Method Data from 2,463 Brazilian children were analyzed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used to investigate the validity of reducing the number of TGMD‐2 skills. Results The short‐form version of the TGMD‐2 with six skills has appropriate indices of confirmatory factorial validity (root mean square error of approximation: 0.06, 90% confidence interval [0.06, 0.07]; comparative fit index: 0.94; normed fit index: 0.94: Tucker–Lewis index: 0.83; goodness‐of‐fit index: 0.98; adjusted goodness‐of‐fit index: 0.95), internal consistency (α = 0.70 for the overall test), interrater and intrarater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients values from 0.81 to 0.96) and test–retest reliability (r values from 0.55 to 0.95). Conclusions From these findings, practitioners now have a valid and reliable, short form of the TGMD‐2 for use in assessing children's motor skill competence; promoting wider use of the test for screening and pedagogical purposes.