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’ actual performance in school activities. The purpose of this study is to assess the reliability of the Persian version of school function assessment (SFA) for Iranian students 6 to 12 years old. Methods: The SFA was designed to assess a range of school-specific functional skills in the three areas of participation, task support, 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, after 2 weeks, the questionnaire was completed by the 40 teachers. The internal consistency was examined by using the Cronbach’s alpha and the reliability of the test-retest was examined by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: The average age of students in this study was 9 years old. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the different parts of this tool 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.