This systematic review was prospectively registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO; CRD42019134576). The review was conducted in two sequential stages and followed PRISMA 2020 for study identification, selection, and reporting, together with COSMIN guidance for the evaluation of measurement properties (Mokkink et al., 2018a, 2018b; Page et al., 2021; Prinsen et al., 2018). Search 1 aimed to identify self-report instruments used to assess DCD in adults. Search 2 focused on studies describing the development, adaptation, or psychometric evaluation of the instruments identified in search 1.

Eligibility criteria were organized according to PICOS/PECOS principles. In search 1, we included peer-reviewed studies that assessed or identified DCD in adults and used brief self-report questionnaire-based instruments. Participants were adults aged 19 to 65 years. In search 2, we included studies reporting psychometric evidence for the identified instruments, such as content validity, structural validity, internal consistency, reliability, measurement error, criterion validity, construct validity, responsiveness, or cross-cultural adaptation. We excluded studies involving children or adolescents, studies in which movement difficulties could be explained by neurological conditions, reviews and meta-analyses, and studies based exclusively on clinical performance tests rather than self-report questionnaires.

We searched ScienceDirect, PubMed, SciELO, LILACS, Web of Science, the Social Science Citation Index, and Scopus. To capture gray literature, we also searched Google Scholar and screened the first 100 records. Searches were performed on October 28, 2023, and updated on May 10, 2024. We included full-text articles available in English, Portuguese, or Spanish, with no restriction on publication year.

The search strategy combined controlled vocabulary and terms commonly used in the DCD literature, including “adult”, “young adult”, “developmental coordination disorder”, “motor skills disorder”, and “dyspraxia”. After identifying the instruments in search 1, a second search combined each instrument name with terms related to development, validation, adaptation, reliability, and other measurement properties. Database-specific syntax was adapted as required.

Titles and abstracts were screened independently by two reviewers, followed by full-text assessment of potentially eligible studies. Disagreements were resolved by discussion and consensus; when necessary, a third reviewer made the final decision. Study management, duplicate removal, and blinded screening were carried out in Rayyan. Inter-rater agreement was quantified with Cohen’s kappa using R (version 4.0.2) and the irr package (Gamer et al., 2019).

For search 1, three reviewers extracted information on title, study purpose, participant characteristics, age range, and instrument used. For search 2, two reviewers extracted instrument characteristics, including construct, target population, administration mode, response options, original language, available translations, scales, subscales, and reported measurement properties. Disagreements were resolved by consensus.

Methodological quality was assessed with COSMIN risk of bias procedures. Studies of instrument development and content validity were judged on aspects such as construct definition, target population involvement, concept elicitation, item generation, pilot testing, cognitive interviewing, and the evaluation of relevance, comprehensiveness, and comprehensibility (Prinsen et al., 2018; Terwee et al., 2018a). Studies of other measurement properties were evaluated for structural validity, internal consistency, cross-cultural validity, reliability, measurement error, criterion validity, construct validity, and responsiveness (Mokkink et al., 2018b). Each COSMIN box was rated as very good, adequate, doubtful, or inadequate according to the “worst score counts” principle.

Content validity outcomes were rated as sufficient (+), insufficient (−), inconsistent (±), or indeterminate (?) following COSMIN recommendations. The same rating system was applied to the interpretation of the remaining measurement properties. Evidence was then synthesized at the instrument level, and the quality of the cumulative evidence was judged using a modified GRADE approach that considered risk of bias, inconsistency, imprecision, and indirectness (Mokkink et al., 2018a, 2018b; Prinsen et al., 2018).