McMaster Handwriting Assessment Protocol (MHAP)
What It Measures
The McMaster Handwriting Assessment Protocol gives occupational therapists a consistent way to look at a child's handwriting and work out where the difficulty actually sits. It covers kindergarten through Grade 6, and it deliberately looks at handwriting as an occupation rather than at the underlying skills that feed it.
Rather than producing a score against a normative sample, the protocol structures what a therapist gathers: samples across different writing demands, observations made while the child writes, and a framework for judging where and whether to intervene. Findings from the protocol may point toward further testing — if a child's performance suggests a visual-motor or postural problem, that gets assessed separately with a different tool.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: Purchase requires accepting a legally binding license that grants a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license for your own research, clinical practice, and non-commercial purposes only
Learn more: Licensing costs about $54 USD.