Further development of the Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren (AMBS): standardized version and scoring system

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-1605421/v1

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Further development of the Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren (AMBS): standardized version and scoring system

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1605421/v1

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Mapping and evaluating regular contexts that schoolchildren attend is of great importance to understanding motor behavior. This communication aims to present the scoring system and standardization of the Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren (AMBS), recently presented to the scientific and educational community. The AMBS was developed to assess children’s interdependent systems, such as home, school, and sports activities, that can influence 6 to 10-year-olds ’ motor development, motor learning, and motor competence. The questionnaire was completed by 377 Brazilian families. Raw scores of each of the three sub-scales (Home, Materials, and School) can be transformed into standard scores, ranging from very low to very high. The AMBS total raw score is a result of the sum of the three sub-scales standard scores and can be classified into three categories, ranging from a low to a high AMBS. We expect that raw and standard scores of the AMBS can be used by researchers, parents, and clinical/education professionals to assess children’s affordances for motor behavior.

Opportunities for action

Children

Environments

Home

School

Sports

Children’s microsystems have been established as crucial factors for the development of motor behavior, motor development, motor learning, and motor competence (Barnett et al., 2019; Bronfenbrenner, 1995; Caçola et al., 2015; Flôres, Rodrigues, Luz, et al., 2021). Exploring the multiple contexts present in children’s daily life can have major implications for intervention, education, and research. Despite that, mapping and evaluating children’s settings is challenging, especially as they begin to attend multiple contexts daily.

Based on an extensive review of the literature that identified the need for an instrument capable of assessing daily affordances for motor behavior of children after three years of age (Flôres et al., 2019), our group developed the Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren (AMBS) (Flôres, Rodrigues, & Cordovil, 2021), a parental self-reporting questionnaire designed to assess the quality and quantity of affordances (opportunities for action) in the child's main microsystems. The AMBS has dichotomous questions, 7-point Likert-type scales, and description-based queries, aiming to map and evaluate children’s regular environments, especially when they start to attend other settings than the home (after 6 years of age). The Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test the structural validity of the AMBS. The model testing resulted in a Chi-Square of 91.24; p < .000 and showed a very good fit (Chi-Square/df = 2.225, CFI = .956; TLI = .942 and RMSEA = .059). In addition, significant correlation values were found between the sub-scales (Home and Materials, R = 0.77; Home and School, R = 0.41; and Materials and School, R = 0.56).

Despite being a valid instrument (Flôres, Rodrigues, & Cordovil, 2021), its standardization and scoring system have not yet been published. Thus, our aim with the present communication is to inform the scientific community of the AMBS update, by presenting the standardization and scoring system.

Sample

The AMBS original sample consisted of 259 responses completed by families of 6 to 10-year-old Brazilian children (Flôres, Rodrigues, & Cordovil, 2021). For this scoring system classification, a broader sample was collected. For the present report, we considered questionnaire responses regarding 377 south Brazilian children (198 boys and 179 girls), between 6 and 10 years of age (M = 7,80; SD = 1,87).

Procedures

The AMBS consists of 73 questions grouped in 7 different categories, regarding the materials/spaces available to children: Child Characteristics (7 questions), Extracurricular Activities (6 questions), Family characterization (7 questions), Home characterization (10 questions), House Items (7 questions), Child Play Materials (22 questions), and School (14 questions). Forty-eight of the 73 questions were grouped according to common content into 11 variables grouped in three categories/factors that represent the characteristics of the school and home environments that children attend, which are then organized in three sub-scales (Home, Materials, and School). All sub-scales' raw scores are transformed into standard scores, according to quartiles cut-off values for each sub-scale, resulting in a classification ranging from 1 (Very Low) to 4 (Very High).

The AMBS total raw score is made up of the sum of the three sub-scales standard scores. Finally, the AMBS total raw scores are transformed into standardized scores: Low (scores less than 8 points), Average (scores ranging from 8 and 10 points), and High (scores above 10 points).

Data Analysis

Descriptive analysis with mean and standard deviation was used to characterize AMBS results according to the proposed scoring systems. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 25.0, was used, adopting an alpha level of significance of 5%.

Most children (74,2%) attended school in the afternoon, 21,3% attended it in the morning, and 4,5% attended full-time school. Of the 377 questionnaires answered, 112 (38,5%) were from families with children aged six years, 42 (14%) seven years, 45 (17,5%) eight years, 49 (16,5%) nine years, and 43 (13,5%) aged ten years. Regarding housing type, 201 children lived in houses and 176 lived in apartments. Considering the monthly income of families, 34 (9%) earned R$1000 or less, 157 (40,0%) earned between R$1001 and R$4000, 31 (8,2%) earned between R$4001 and R$5000, and 161 (42,7%) had a monthly income over R$5001.

Table 1 shows the descriptive values of the AMBS responses, regarding child characterization, movement activities, and AMBS scores, by sex and for the total sample. Concerning the Child Movement activities, most of the boys participate in team sports (63.6%), while about half of the girls participate in this type of activity (49.2%). Almost three-quarters of children participate in outdoor activities (74.8%). Another interesting finding is that girls practice individual sports more than boys do (55.3% and 39.9%, respectively).

Table 1

Characterization and descriptive values of the sample.
AMBS categories	Boys (n = 198)		Girls (n = 179)		Total (n = 377)
Child Characteristics	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Age	7.74	1.83	7.87	1.91	7.80	1.87
Child Movement activities	n	%	n	%	n	%
Team Sports	126	63.6	88	49.2	214	56.8
Individual Sports	79	39.9	99	55.3	178	47.2
Combat Sports	32	16.2	18	10.1	50	13.3
Outdoor Activities	151	76.3	131	73.2	282	74.8
Music Activities	56	28.3	59	33.0	115	30.5
Cultural/Artistic Activities	86	43.4	96	53.6	182	48.3
Home Variables	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Inside Space A	6.44	1.47	6.65	1.49	6.54	1.48
Inside Space B	0.35	0.62	0.32	0.55	0.34	0.58
Outside Space	1.17	1.08	1.16	0.97	1.16	1.02
Materials Variables	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Sedentary Materials	12.96	4.28	13.19	4.15	13.07	4.22
Pretend Play Toys	14.40	6.66	13.66	6.32	14.05	6.50
Educational Toys	18.64	10.89	18.17	10.14	18.42	10.53
Manipulative Materials	5.83	3.69	4.49	3.46	5.20	3.64
Stability Materials	2.40	2.24	2.68	1.93	2.53	2.10
School Variables	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Space for Movement	4.65	2.68	4.81	3.00	4.73	2.84
Free Space for Movement	2.58	1.6	2.42	1.64	2.50	1.70
Sedentary Space	3.38	1.89	3.66		3.51	2.2
AMBS. Sub-scales and total	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Home	7.96	2.4	8.13	2.18	8.04	2.30
Materials	54.23	22.41	52.20	21.30	53.27	21.89
School	10.61	5.36	10.89	6.17	10.75	5.75
AMBS total	8.79	2.37	8.68	2.33	8.04	2.30

Table 2 shows the quartile cut-off values for the distribution of the sub-scales to produce the standardized scores. Then, to establish the cutoff value for the AMBS total, the sum of the subscales was computed and tercile values were used.

Table 2

AMBS sub-scales standardization and AMBS total scores.
	AMBS classification
Sub-scales	VERY LOW	LOW	GOOD	VERY GOOD
Sub-scales	1st quartile	2nd quartile	3rd quartile	4th quartile
Home	< 6	7	8–9	> 9
Materials	< 36	36 to53	54 to 68	> 68
School	< 7	7 to 8	9 to13	> 13
Total	LOW	AVERAGE		HIGH
Total	1st tercile	2nd tercile		3rd tercile
AMBS total	< 8	8 to 10		> 10

Our general premise was that the multiple microsystems (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1993) and their objects, places, surfaces, events, and other people (Gibson, 1979) can invite, permit, or inhibit progressively more complex child-environment interactions. These opportunities for action, are intimately tied to the features of the context, but also to the child's action capabilities, which change along with the development (Flôres, Rodrigues, & Cordovil, 2021). Thus, the present communication establishes the scoring and classification system for the AMBS questionnaire, which are of great importance to assess the available affordances in children’s environments. Knowledge about the quality and quantity of the existent affordances can help parents and teachers to better shape environments for children. Also, professionals can use the AMBS to investigate the relations between the quality of different contexts and to correlate it with other variables, which can be evaluated by other instruments, such as children’s motor competence, motor development or motor learning. Our expectation is that children with different AMBS scores, who have different opportunities for motor behavior stimulation during their daily activities, will also have different motor competence profiles.

In summary, our findings provide further AMBS progress to be a tool capable of assessing and measuring motor affordances for schoolchildren. Furthermore, some studies with younger children indicate that there is a relationship between affordances in the child’s microsystems and his or her motor competence (Barnett et al., 2019; Niemistö et al., 2019) but this relationship has not been fully explored in older children. Exploring the relation between the quality and quantity of the microsystem’s affordances and its influence on schoolchildren’s motor competence can be fundamental for understanding the complex nature of these factors. The Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren questionnaire has the potential to be a useful tool for such a task.

Barnett, L., Hnatiuk, J., Salmon, J., & Hesketh, K. (2019). Modifiable factors which predict children’s gross motor competence: A prospective cohort study. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 16(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-019-0888-0
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Caçola, P., Gabbard, C., Montebelo, M., & Santos, D. (2015). Further Development and Validation of the Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development–Infant Scale (AHEMD-IS). Physical Therapy, 95(6), 901–923. https://doi.org/10.2522/ptj.20140011
Flôres, F., Rodrigues, L. P., Copetti, F., Lopes, F., & Cordovil, R. (2019). Affordances for Motor Skill Development in Home, School, and Sport Environments: A Narrative Review. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 126(3), 003151251982927. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031512519829271
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Niemistö, D., Barnett, L., Cantell, M., Finni, T., Korhonen, E., & Sääkslahti, A. (2019). Socioecological correlates of perceived motor competence in 5 - to 7 ‐ year ‐ old Finnish children. Scand J Med Sci Sports, 29, 753–765. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.13389

A statement on participant consent – all subjects agree in participating the study before answering the AMBS questionnaire and were free to drop the survey at any time. This study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM, Brazil) with Protocol: 6336117.0.0000.5346

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Further development of the Affordances for Motor Behavior of Schoolchildren (AMBS): standardized version and scoring system

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Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Data Analysis

Results

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