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Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the ‘physical well-being, health and motor development inventory’ used to assess school readiness in ordinary and mentally retarded pre-school children.

Methods: A descriptive study examining validity was conducted using random sampling. Two hundred students (160 ordinary and 40 mentally retarded children) were randomly selected from the city of Tehran. In investigating the validity of the inventory, evidence related to content validity and construct validity were used.

Results: The evidence related to content validity showed that the questions related to the domain elements of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, nutrition and safety exercises all had high correlation coefficients with the overall elements. Some of the questions related to the domain elements of sensorimotor skills, physical fitness and activities of daily living did not have acceptable correlation coefficients. However, after removing the outliers the overall validity coefficient and subsequently that of the overall test increased. The t computed for construct-related evidence was significant too. Eventually, the validity coefficients were estimated at 0.859, 0.832, 0.671, 0.585, 0.725, 0.719 and 0.719 for gross motor skills, fine motor skills, sensorimotor skills, physical fitness, activities of daily living, nutrition and safety exercises, respectively.

Discussion: The results indicate that the overall inventory and its elements have good validity for assessing preschool children’s readiness in the domains of physical well-being, health and motor development.