Play assessment for group settings: a pilot study to construct an assessment tool

The Play Assessment for Group Setting (PAGS) was constructed to measure children's play performance. The study was undertaken with 93 children aged from 2 to 8 years to examine whether the items of the PAGS construct a unidimensional scale that can be used to measure children's play ability. The internal scale validity and the person response validity of the PAGS were investigated by examining the goodness-of-fit of the play items and children's play performance to the many-faceted Rasch model for the PAGS. In total, 46 of the 51 play items demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit. Of the 93 children, 90.3% demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit on the scale of play items. Overall, the results support both the scale and person response validity for the PAGS, as well as providing preliminary evidence that the PAGS can be used for a more detailed evaluation of children's abilities in play performance within natural day-care contexts. Further research is needed to examine other aspects of the validity and reliability of the PAGS measures.