Examining the Purdue Pegboard Test for Occupational Therapy Practice

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Debra Lindstrom-Hazel, Ph.D., OTRL, FAOTA
Nicole VanderVlies Veenstra, MS, OTRL

Abstract

Background: Occupational therapy ethics require that therapists use current assessment tools that provide useful comparison data. When an assessment only has normative data that is more than 40 years old, it cannot be considered current. The purpose of this study was to examine the past and current use of the Purdue Pegboard Test by occupational therapists and other professionals and to determine if it is beneficial to conduct a large normative study on the Purdue Pegboard Assembly Task (PPAT) in order to bring the test up to date.

Method: This was a psychometric study of inter-rater reliability and a small normative study of the PPAT with 150 healthy working adults from MI. Descriptive statistics were used for normative means, standard deviations, and standard errors of measurement.

Results: Inter-rater reliability was measured using the intra-class correlation coefficient for the mean of all student-rating teams of seven occupational therapy students. The result of the psychometric study determined the ICC was above .99. During the normative study, 150 participants performed the PPAT for three trials. Norms for gender and ages 18-49 and 50-62 are presented.

Conclusion: The result of the inter-rater reliability test determined that OT students can be reliable raters for the PPAT. The normative study collected current norms for healthy working adults in MI, but validity testing and a larger normative study is needed to bring the psychometrics of the PPAT up to date to be generalized for current use by occupational therapists.

Recommended Citation

Lindstrom-Hazel, D. K., & VanderVlies Veenstra, N. (2015). Examining the Purdue Pegboard Test for Occupational Therapy Practice. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.1178