How well can family childcare providers report on preschoolers’ motor skill competence?

Background: Assessing children’s movement skill competence objectively is resource and time intensive. Family childcare providers (FCCPs) are with young children for most of a normal weekday and may have an understanding of their motor skill competence. Objective: This study examined how well FCCPs can report on preschoolers’ motor skills. Method: Seventy-eight 3–5 year olds (53.1% girls) from 26 FCCPs participated. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 assessed actual motor skill competence and a survey assessed preschoolers’ motor competence as reported by FCCPs. Bivariate correlations examined associations between actual and FCCPs’ proxy-report of preschoolers’ motor skill competence. Regression models tested the predictive power of FCCPs’ proxy-report on actual preschoolers’ motor skill competence, accounting for age and sex. Results: There were moderate significant correlations for locomotion (r =.30), object control (r =.38), and overall motor skill competence (r =.36). The regression models showed proxy report was statistically associated with preschoolers’ object control skills (β =.78, p =.011) and overall motor skills (β =.72, p =.022), but not locomotor skills (β =.52, p =.084). FCCPs’ proxy-report of preschoolers’ motor skill competence explained 20.9, and 20.1% of preschoolers’ variance in object control, and overall motor skill competence, respectively after adjusting for biological sex and age (increasing). Conclusions: FCCPs may be used as an alternative source of information in reporting young children’s actual motor skill competence, at least for the object control domain. There is an opportunity for education of FCCPs regarding children’s locomotor skill development.