Assessing handwriting in preschool-aged children: Reliability and internal consistency of the “Just Write!” tool

ABSTRACT Researchers utilized a cross-sectional secondary analysis of data within an ongoing non-randomized controlled trial study design to establish the reliability and internal consistency of a novel handwriting assessment for preschoolers, the Just Write! (JW), written by the authors. Seventy-eight children from an area preschool participated in the study by completing the JW and the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI). The results indicate the JW can be reliably scored by novice and experienced practitioners. The results also indicate that grasp is not correlated with writing ability, and point toward developmental implications with upper and lower case writing. In addition, the authors provide the JW as an appendix to aide interested practitioners and researchers.