Handwriting speed: duration of testing period and relation to socio-economic disadvantage and handedness

In the course of norm-referencing the Handwriting Speed Test (HST) for 8- to 18-year-olds in the Irish education system, the authors examined the issue of the duration of the handwriting test period, the relation of handwriting speed to socio-economic disadvantage and the comparative handwriting speed of left- and right-handed students. The literature reports some concerns about the generalizability of results from a short-duration handwriting speed test, some evidence that children from poorer backgrounds are less proficient at handwriting, and conflicting results on the relation of handedness to speed of handwriting. The results of this study suggest that the addition of a further 9-minute test to the 3-minute test of the HST would improve its ability to predict handwriting speed problems in everyday extended writing tasks, such as examinations, and would also identify some children who are wrongly classified as slow writers on the 3-minute test. The results also indicate a markedly lower-than-average handwriting speed for children attending designated disadvantaged schools. The results suggest that neither left- nor right-handed children have a consistent advantage in handwriting speed.