The Motor Competence Assessment (MCA) is a quantitative test battery that assesses motor
competence across the whole lifespan. It is composed of three sub-scales: locomotor, stability, and
manipulative, each of them assessed by two different objectively measured tests. The MCA construct
validity for children and adolescents, having normative values from 3 to 23 years of age, and the
configural invariance between age groups, were recently established. The aim of this study is to
expand the MCA’s development and validation by defining the best and leanest method to score
and classify MCA sub-scales and total score. One thousand participants from 3 to 22 years of age,
randomly selected from the Portuguese database on MC, participated in the study. Three different
procedures to calculate the sub-scales and total MCA values were tested according to alternative
models. Results were compared to the reference method, and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient,
Cronbach’s Alpha, and Bland–Altman statistics were used to describe agreement between the three
methods. The analysis showed no substantial differences between the three methods. Reliability
values were perfect (0.999 to 1.000) for all models, implying that all the methods were able to classify
everyone in the same way. We recommend implementing the most economic and efficient algorithm,
i.e., the configural model algorithm, averaging the percentile scores of the two tests to assess each
MCA sub-scale and total scores
This work was supported by the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) under Grant
number UIDB/00447/2020 (unit 447); the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through
the Regional Operational Program North 2020 under Project TECH—Technology, Environment,
Creativity and Health, Grant number Norte-01-0145-FEDER-00004; and the Portuguese Science
Foundation (FCT) under Grant number UID04045/2020
