Adaptação transcultural e análise da validade do Heres How I Write auto avaliação da escrita

Abstract

Handwriting is a daily occupation for school aged children and it is estimated that from 31 to 60% of each day at school is filled with fine motor activities, and the biggest part of this time is dedicated to handwriting. The estimated prevalence of handwriting problems varies from 5 to 30% depending on the criteria and assessment instruments used. Children who have handwriting difficulties may avoid writing, leading to restriction on the participation in this important daily occupation, which later can compromise school performance. Children with handwriting difficulties, especially in developed countries, generally are referred to an occupational therapist for assessment and intervention. School based occupational therapists need valid and reliable instruments to assess and interpret the problems on handwriting and to provide intervention plans. Then, it is important to establish the validity of the handwriting assessments in scientific studies. One instrument of interest is the Heres How I Write (HHIW), a handwriting self-evaluation that involves both student and teacher. The HHIW is an instrument easy to use and to understand once it consists of cards with pictures about the handwriting abilities, which involves the children, helping them to identify their difficulties and to define intervention goals looking forward to improving the handwriting. This instrument helps the children, together with the teacher, to identify calligraphy problems so they can later, together with the therapist, look for solutions to improve the handwriting. The objective of this study was to translate, adapt the HHIW for the Brazilian Portuguese and to analyze its validity and reliability for the Brazilian children. The study was developed in two steps: (1) adaptation process of the HHIW and (2) experimental application to analyze the practical utility aspects, validity and reliability. Sixty children aged 8 to 10 years old, from both genders, from public and private schools participated in the study. The children were divided into two groups: (G1) with handwriting difficulties and (G2) without handwriting difficulties. The children from both groups were paired by gender, school grade, age and social class. The children were interviewed in the schools and the teachers answered the questionnaire. Besides that, the parents responded to a socioeconomic questionnaire and to the Home Environment Resources Scale (HERS). Firstly, all the transcultural adaptation process of the HHIW was done. The translated instrument was experimentally applied and adjustments were done willing to have the best adequacy to the Brazilian Portuguese language. Then, the instrument was applied on the Brazilian students sample with poor and typical handwriting. The children liked to answer to the questionnaire and the group with poor handwriting presented significantly lower scores than the group with good handwriting on the total score in all categories of the HHIW, both on the children and teachers perception. The test-retest reliability of the total score for the children´s (0.96) and the teacher´s (0.930) questionnaires and the internal consistency (0.915, 0.953, respectively) were excellent, but the congruence between the children´s and teacher´s total scores was moderate (0,738). There was no significant difference between the groups regarding the quantity and quality of stimuli in the family environment. There was no significant correlation between the items of the HERS and the total score on the HHIW which suggests that environmental factors did not influence the quality of writing in the sample studied. It was concluded that the psychometric qualities of HHIW were maintained with the adaptation, showing that this assessment tool can be used with Brazilian children to help in the identification of problems in calligraphy and in the definition of intervention goals focused on handwriting improvement.