Abstract

SANCHEZ-MATAS, Yolanda; GUTIERREZ, David; SALIDO LOPEZ, José Vicente  and  HERNANDEZ MARTINEZ, Andrea. Design and validation of instruments for assessing sitting posture and fine motor function in primary school students. MHSalud [online]. 2022, vol.19, n.1, pp.112-129. ISSN 1659-097X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15359/mhs.19-1.9.

Schoolchildren can spend around 80% of their school day sat. In this sense, different studies establish a direct relationship between posture and health problems. Moreover, writing difficulties can also affect the perception of abilities, hence the importance of instilling proper postural and graphomotor habits from an early age. The main objectives of this study were, on the one hand, to design instruments for observation and data collection of postural and graphomotricity patterns and, on the other hand, to validate these instruments through expert opinion. A secondary objective was to evaluate the internal consistency of the instrument to assess the posture of sedestation. Concerning the first objective, both instruments showed high inter-judge concordance in terms of relevance and precision of the items. In relation to the second objective, the instruments were applied to a sample of 93 children from the 1st and 5th grades of primary school to evaluate their internal consistency of the posture instrument. Dimensional reliability results showed values greater than 0.7. The instruments designed are presented as useful tools to assess the patterns related to posture and graphomotricity and thus contribute to detecting problems associated with school-age children. In conclusion, these instruments can provide appropriate guidelines for the development of work plans to meet the needs of students.

Keywords : primary education; motor behavior; graphomotricity; postural health.

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