The Movement ABC-2 Test in China: Comparison with UK norms for 3-10 year olds.
UK norms for the Movement ABC-2 don’t fit Chinese kids—swap them out or risk wrong decisions.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ke et al. (2020) gave the Movement ABC-2 to Chinese children aged 3-10.
They compared the scores to the UK norms printed in the test manual.
All kids were neurotypical and lived in mainland China.
What they found
Chinese kids scored higher on Manual Dexterity and Balance.
UK kids scored higher on Aiming & Catching.
The gap changed with age, but not in one clear direction.
How this fits with other research
Hua et al. (2015) saw the same age twist with the DCDQ’07 in China: the tool worked for 5-6-year-olds but fell apart for 4-year-olds.
Lee et al. (2023) found the ToMI-2 factor structure failed in neurotypical preschoolers, echoing that Western test maps don’t always fit Asian kids.
Faso et al. (2016) in Serbia and Takayanagi et al. (2016) in Japan both had to build local norms for preschool checklists; Li’s team shows motor tests need the same fix.
Why it matters
If you use Movement ABC-2 UK norms in China, you will mis-label typical kids as delayed on Aiming & Catching and miss real delays on Manual Dexterity.
Build a small local reference set or use age-band cut-offs from Li’s data before you write goals or decide eligibility.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Score each subtest against Li’s Chinese means, not the UK manual table, before you flag a skill for intervention.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Test component of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2nd Edition (Movement ABC-2) is used worldwide to identify children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). In China, practitioners have been using this test with the assumption that the published UK norms are valid for Chinese children. However no systematic investigation has previously been undertaken to check this assumption. 2185 children aged 3-10 years old from a national representative sample in China were therefore recruited to the current study. Performance on the Movement ABC-2 was assessed and compared with the UK standardization norms. Gender differences were also examined. The comparisons revealed that Chinese children were generally better in Manual Dexterity and Balance tasks compared to their UK peers; while UK children were better in Aiming & Catching tasks. Further analysis showed an interaction of country and age with mixed results. For both countries, girls were generally better in Manual Dexterity and Balance tasks, and boys were generally better in Aiming & Catching. Possible explanations for the country differences are discussed. The results suggest that local norms for the Movement ABC-2 Test are needed in China.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103742