1SRM College of Occupational Therapy, Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu
2SRM College of Occupational Therapy, Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu
Online published on 1 October, 2011.
The purpose of this study was to establish normative data of Evaluation Tool for Children Handwriting (ETCH-M) for Chennai children.
Six hundred (n= 600) children, aged 6 to 10 years (mean age = 7.55 years ± 1.11 years) were included through convenience sampling from normal school located in the North Chennai, South Chennai and Central Chennai inorder to avert geographical variation. ETCH-M was administered individually to assess handwriting speed and legibility.
It shows that there is statistically significant difference between the age groups on the performance of ETCH - M (F=5.9, pd”0.001; F=14.57, pd”0.001; F=2.9, pd”0.05for letter legibility, word legibility and numerical legibility respectively). There is statistically significant difference between the age groups on the performance of ETCH-M for speed in Near Point Copying and Far Point Copying. This depicts that as the age increases the children handwriting legibility and speed also increases.
The normative data obtained from this study can be used as cut-off score for screening the children with handwriting difficulties and it can be used as assessment tool as well as outcome measures.
