Quality of life in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD): A systematic review and meta-analysis

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) often report reduced quality of life (QoL). However, substantial variability in findings across studies hinders insight into the profile of QoL in DCD. To address this, we investigated QoL in children with DCD using a meta-analytic approach, examining overall QoL, and QoL across its separate domains - physical, emotional, social, and school.

Participants included 831 children with DCD (M_age = 10.10 years) and 10,283 neurotypical children (M_age = 10.04 years), i.e., controls. Separate meta-analyses were conducted for parent (N = 8) and child (N = 7) report data to compare overall QoL between those with and without DCD. Subgroup analyses compared QoL between groups across QoL domains. Concordance between parent and child-report was explored.

Children with DCD reported significantly lower overall QoL relative to controls (SMD_child = -0.38, p_child <.001). This effect was consistent across domains, regardless of report-type. Parents reported significantly worse overall QoL for children with DCD than children themselves (95 % CI_parent [-1.59, -0.95], 95 % CI_child [-0.52, -0.24]) driven by the social (95 % CI_parent [-1.89, -0.52], 95 % CI_child [-0.36, -0.03]) and school domains (95 % CI_parent [-2.52, -0.65], 95 % CI_child [-0.53, -0.15]).

Our results demonstrate the widespread impact of DCD on well-being, supporting recent arguments that DCD is more than just a disorder of movement. Discordance between parent and child perceptions highlight the importance of using both report-types when examining QoL in DCD. Our work highlights the need for more research directly comparing the profile of QoL observed in those with DCD to those with neurodevelopmental conditions (either in isolation of, or co-occurrence with, DCD).