Developing orientation and mobility skills checklist and determining its cut-off scores

Abstract

Introduction: In order to be able to carry out systematic teaching activities for the orientation and mobility skills that are vital in the lives of students with visual impairment in schools, it is extremely important to determine their performance levels with measurement tools. The aim of this study is to develop an Orientation and Mobility Skills Checklist (OMSC) for visually impaired students at primary and secondary school levels and to determine the cutoff scores.

Method: The OMSC consists of two independent checklists. In the process of the OMSC development, the psychometric properties of the tool were determined by applying it to all tactile students studying in primary and secondary schools in a province. The findings on the validity and reliability of the OMSC have shown that it is suitable to be used as a measurement tool to determine orientation and mobility skills. The Orientation Skills (OS) checklist is a single-factor structure of 6 items. On the other hand, the Mobility Skills (MS) checklist has a 19-item, 3-factor structure. After the tool was developed, identifying the norm values was aimed by determining the percentiles so that the scores could be interpreted. With this aim, the OMSC was applied to a total of 402 students who were studying in separate educational environments opened for visually impaired students and to students who were continuing their inclusive education in the regions close to these schools in Turkey. However, since the scores obtained aggregated in low scores, the cut-off scores were determined with the Angoff method based on expert opinion. After the implementation, the psychometric features of the OMSC were re-examined.

Findings: The descriptive statistics of the scores obtained revealed that 70.1% of the students received zero points from the MS control checklist. OS scores did not deviate excessively from the normal distribution. The construct validity and reliability of the checklists were examined, and the cut- off scores for minimum competency levels for the OS and MS checklists were determined as 2 and 6 points, respectively.

Discussion: The results of the research were discussed within the framework of the relevant literature. The OMSC can be used to assess students, determine the progress of students studying at different educational institutions, and direct them to appropriate training in line with their needs.