Objective. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the Evaluation Tool of Children’s Handwriting (ETCH) and teacher’s perception of hand-writing legibility.
Methods. The ETCH was administered to 45 first-grade students with illegible handwriting as reported by their teachers. The teachers completed a teacher’s questionnaire at the same time to indicate the children’s level of handwriting difficulties both in general and in specific tasks that resemble the test tasks of the ETCH.
Results. There was no significant relationship between the ETCH scores and the teacher questionnaire scores in either general legibility or task-specific legibility.
Conclusion. The ecological validity of the ETCH, in reference to the teachers’ perception of handwriting legibility, was not established. Further changes for scoring criteria may be warranted before the ETCH can be used with confidence that the scores obtained are meaningfully related to actual performance in the classroom as determined by teachers.
