The viability of the English-Maltese assessment of speed of handwriting

Abstract

This paper discusses the viability of the English-Maltese Assessment of Speed of Handwriting (EMASH), a bilingual assessment battery that was developed to identify handwriting difficulties in 14–15-year-old Maltese students. Since there are no locally available standardized assessments that measure writing speed performance, the aim of this study was to pilot the novel assessment on a small sample of participants prior to the main data collection stage. A cross sectional, quantitative research design was applied. The English and Maltese versions of the assessment were administered to 70 (34 boys and 36 girls) participants from Maltese state, independent and church schools. Measures of face and content validity, internal consistency reliability and discriminative validity were conducted. These validity and reliability measures, together with participant performance and feedback, determined the changes that needed to be made to the administration, instructions, format and content of the assessment battery, prior to its standardization. The EMASH proved to be a valid and reliable tool.