Identifying children who are likely to struggle with mathematics has long been a challenge for parents and schools, particularly in the crucial first years of primary education. A new study published in the Psychreg Journal of Psychology suggests that a short parental questionnaire focused on everyday ordering skills could serve as a practical early warning system for mathematical difficulties.
The Order Processing Questionnaire, or OPQ, asks parents to rate their young child’s ability to carry out routine tasks that involve sequencing and order, such as recalling the order of daily events or grasping how the days of the week follow one another. Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast tested the questionnaire with parents of 509 children in their first year of primary school in Northern Ireland. The study used confirmatory factor analysis, a statistical technique used to assess whether a proposed measurement structure holds up in a large sample.
The findings offered partial support for the questionnaire’s existing two-part structure, which separates positively and negatively worded questions into distinct factors. Some measures of statistical fit were satisfactory, while others fell short of the accepted threshold, pointing to a tool that shows genuine promise but still requires refinement before it could be widely used as a screening instrument for early maths difficulties.
Results were noticeably stronger for the group of positively worded items, which demonstrated acceptable reliability and better validity. The negatively worded questions performed less well, likely because there are only three of them compared to five in the positive group. A smaller set of items tends to capture less variation and generally produces weaker reliability figures.
The broader context matters here. In the UK, around one in five children fails to meet the expected standard in mathematics by the age of five, and many of those children go on to experience persistent difficulties throughout their school years. Catching early signs of maths difficulties in young children before formal assessments are possible could make a meaningful difference to their educational outcomes and long-term life chances.
What makes the OPQ particularly appealing is that it does not test children directly. Instead, it draws on parental knowledge of a child’s everyday behaviour, making it low-pressure, quick to complete, and accessible to families regardless of educational background. Research has already shown that ordering abilities in early childhood are reliable predictors of later maths achievement, and the OPQ is designed to tap into exactly those skills.
The study does acknowledge clear limitations. Parental reports are inherently subjective and may not reflect what a child is actually capable of in a school setting. The research also did not include any direct measure of the children’s mathematical performance, which means the questionnaire’s ability to predict maths outcomes cannot be confirmed from this study alone. Socioeconomic status was not measured either, despite being a well-established influence on early numeracy.
Future research should test the OPQ against objective maths assessments and explore whether a simpler, single-factor version of the tool might actually perform better. Including teacher ratings alongside parental reports would also strengthen confidence in the results.
The OPQ is not yet a finished product, but as a non-invasive, parent-friendly method for flagging children who may be at risk of maths difficulties, it represents a worthwhile direction for early identification research.