research paper: reliability of the modified in-hand manipulation test and the relationship between in-hand manipulation and handwriting

Objectives: this study aimed at analyzing the test-retest and interrater reliabilities of the test of in-hand manipulation-modified (tihm-m), as well as the relationship between in-hand manipulation and handwriting.methods: we administered the tihm-m twice, two days apart, and the beknopte beoordelingsmethode voor kinder handschriften (bhk) - concise assessment method for children’s handwriting test once to 105 children (51 boys and 54 girls) aged 6.5 to 9.5 years in regular school. speed and quality of in-hand manipulation and handwriting were recorded. we performed a pearson correlation test for the relationship between the speeds and the qualities of the tihm-m and the bhk.results: test-retest of the tihm-m was excellent for the speed (icc=0.84; 95% ci:0.73-0.90) and good for the quality (icc=0.62, 95% ci:0.36-0.78). interrater reliabilities for both speed (icc= 0.87; 95% ci:0.78-0.92) and quality (icc= 0.86, 95% ci:0.60-0.84) were also excellent. we found a significant relationship between the speeds of the tihm-m and the bhk, but there was no significant relationship between the qualities of handwriting and the timh-m.discussion: the timh-m assessed the speed and the quality of in-hand manipulations, and it had good reliability. nevertheless, the relationship between in-hand manipulation and handwriting needs more investigation to be confirmed.