The Reliability of the Persian Version of the School Function Assessment in Iranian Students 6 to 12 Years Old in Tehran's Schools

Abstract

Background: Ability of the students to perform a variety of functional activities leads to their participation in school-based learning activities. Therefore, it is essential to provide a reliable and credible criterion that provides information about the students’ actualperformanceinschoolactivities. Thepurposeof thisstudyistoassessthereliabilityof thePersianversionof schoolfunction assessment (SFA) for Iranian students 6 to 12 years old. Methods: TheSFAwasdesignedtoassessarangeof school-specificfunctionalskillsinthethreeareasof participation,tasksupport, and activity performance. In this methodological study, 150 students were randomly selected from the public schools in Tehran. A demographic questionnaire was used to gather data. The SFA was completed by teachers. To test the reliability of the test-retest, after2weeks,thequestionnairewascompletedbythe40teachers. TheinternalconsistencywasexaminedbyusingtheCronbach’s alpha and the reliability of the test-retest was examined by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: Theaverageageof studentsinthisstudywas9yearsold. TheCronbach’salphacoefficientforthedifferentpartsof thistool was excellent (0.84 < alpha < 0.99). The test-retest reliability of the test was good for the subtest of this tool (0.85 < ICC < 0.99). Conclusions: The results showed that the Persian version of the SFA is a good test for the assessment of the school performance of Iranian students in terms of internal consistency and the reliability of the test-retest. Therefore, the SFA can be used as a research study to evaluate students in Iran.