Gross Motor Family Report: Refinement and evaluation of psychometric properties

Abstract

The Gross Motor Family Report (GM-FR) is a new way for families in their own homes and communities to tell us about what their children with cerebral palsy (CP) can do to move around in their everyday life. Doctors and therapists have usually looked at what they thought was important about the motor skills of young people with CP. This new study set out to ask different questions. We wanted to hear the opinion of families about what is important for doctors and therapists to know about what their children can do.

Once the new measure was created, we needed to test its usefulness with parents of children and adolescents with CP. Twelve families shared their opinions with the researchers. Their ideas and advice helped us make changes in the GM-FR. We added a new scoring system, pictures of children doing the activities, and descriptions of what we were interested in. The result was the creation of the GM-FR, with 28 items. After that, 146 families scored the GM-FR v.2.0, and we calculated how accurate the measure was. Then, 46 parents scored the measure twice within 7 to 30 days. Through this, we learned that the two measures showed similar results.