Abstract
The Personalized Enjoyment Questionnaire (PEQ) is a new tool developed to assess children's enjoyment of the motor tasks in the Ignite Challenge motor assessment performed in a larger study exploring body language in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The PEQ is a 10cm visual analog scale (VAS) with personalized pictorial anchor points. It is based on a VAS with happy/sad faces similar to the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale, however, takes into consideration the unique challenges that children with ASD may experience with facial expression identification. Twenty-eight participants (aged 6-12 years) completed the Ignite Challenge followed by the PEQ. Each participant was given pencil crayons to draw something they enjoy (10cm anchor), something they do not enjoy (0cm anchor), and something neutral (5cm anchor). Participants were then shown images of the Ignite Challenge's 13-items and rated their enjoyment of each using their PEQ. Descriptive analysis assessed the PEQ's usability and nature of the drawings. Participants drew images ranging from people (e.g., parents, siblings, friends) to activities (e.g., sports, chores, reading). Twenty participants used the full 10cm VAS with no difficulty, three scored it as a 3-point scale (enjoyable/neutral/unenjoyable), and five could not use it. Twelve participants used >3 colours for their drawing, eight used ?2, and three only used words. These results demonstrate the PEQ's potential to measure physical activity enjoyment of children with ASD. Its use may help instructors/coaches understand and better support the participation of children with ASD in programs. Future studies will examine its reliability and validity.
