Assessment of the reliability of pediatric screening: a tool for occupational or physical therapists

This study was conducted to determine interrater and test-retest reliability characteristics of the instrument, Pediatric Screening: A Tool for Occupational and Physical Therapists. This protocol was developed by two public school therapists to be used as a decision-making mechanism for systematically assessing the students' relative need for therapy services. The subjects were 75 children, aged 3 to 16 years, with various types and degrees of disability. Each was scored on the screening tool by three different school therapists within one week to determine interrater reliability. Each of the therapists also tested two or three of the children again several weeks later to determine test-retest reliability. Analysis of interrater reliability using the Spearman-Brown prediction formula showed total scores on the screening tool to be reliable at the .90 level. Test-retest reliability measurements using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients showed that total scores were highly correlated (r = .96; p less than .001). These measures indicated that the Pediatric Screening tool is a highly reliable instrument in terms of scoring between therapists and by individual therapists across time.