Brief assessment of motor function: content validity and reliability of the oral motor scales.
OBJECTIVE
The Brief Assessment of Motor Function consists of five 0- to 10-point hierarchical scales designed for rapid assessment of gross, fine, and oral motor skills. We describe the development and evaluation of the two Brief Assessment of Motor Function Oral Motor Scales: Oral Motor Articulation and Oral Motor Deglutition.


METHODS
This validation study employed an expert panel of 28 speech-language pathologists, who rated the Brief Assessment of Motor Function Oral Motor Scales items on a scale from 1 to 4 (disagree to agree) to establish content validity. For reliability, oral motor performances of 18 participants (6 mos-20 yrs) were videotaped to represent a wide range of articulation and deglutition capabilities. Four speech-language pathologists, and 1 undergraduate and 10 graduate speech-language pathology students rated the participants' taped samples using the Brief Assessment of Motor Function Oral Motor Scales.


RESULTS
All items on the content validity questionnaire had average agreement scores that exceeded criteria, except two, which were not clearly worded; these were clarified. Interrater and intrarater reliability values were 0.997 and 0.986 for the Oral Motor Articulation Scale and 0.977 and 0.997 for the Oral Motor Deglutition Scale.


CONCLUSIONS
Expert feedback and reliability procedures suggest that the Brief Assessment of Motor Function Oral Motor Articulation and Deglutition Scales represent the content that they are designed to assess and are reliable for rapid assessment of oral motor skills.
Sonies
Barbara C
BC
Rehabilitation Medicine Department, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-1604, USA.
Cintas
Holly Lea
HL
Parks
Rebecca
R
Miller
Jeri
J
Caggiano
Collette
C
Gottshall
Shawna Gearhart
SG
Gerber
Lynn
L
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003680:Deglutition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills; D015588:Observer Variation; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D055815:Young Adult