The validity and reliability of chinese frontal assessment battery in evaluating executive dysfunction among Chinese patients with small subcortical infarct.
OBJECTIVE
Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a valid and reliable screening test for evaluating executive dysfunction among whites with frontal and subcortical degenerative lesions. We studied the properties of a Chinese version of FAB (CFAB) in evaluating executive dysfunction among Chinese stroke patients with small subcortical infarct.


METHODS
Concurrent validity was evaluated using Wisconsin Card Sorting Tst (WCST) and Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-Initiation/Perseveration Subset (MDRS I/P) among 41 controls and 30 stroke patients with small subcortical infarct. Discriminant validities of CFAB and its subitems were compared with those of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Internal consistency, test-retest, and interrater reliability of CFAB were evaluated.


RESULTS
The CFAB had low to good correlation with various executive measures: MDRS I/P (r = 0.63, p < 0.001), number of category completed (r = 0.45, p < 0.001), and number of perseverative errors (r = -0.37, p < 0.01) of WCST. Among the executive measures, only number of category completed had significant but small contribution (6.5%, p = 0.001) to the variance of CFAB. A short version of CFAB using three items yielded higher overall classification accuracy (86.6%) than that of CFAB full version (80.6%) and MMSE (77.6%). Internal consistency (alpha = 0.77), test-retest reliability (rho = 0.89, p < 0.001), and interrater reliability (rho = 0.85, p < 0.001) of CFAB were good.


CONCLUSIONS
Although CFAB is reliable, it is only moderately valid in evaluating executive dysfunction among Chinese stroke patients with small subcortical infarct. The clinical use of CFAB in the evaluation of executive dysfunction among this group of patients cannot be recommended at this stage.
Mok
Vincent C T
VC
Departments of Medicine and Therapeutics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. vctmok@netvigator.com
Wong
Adrian
A
Yim
Patty
P
Fu
Michael
M
Lam
Wynnie W M
WW
Hui
Andrew C
AC
Yau
Carmen
C
Wong
Ka Sing
KS
D000368:Aged; D044466:Asian People; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D002544:Cerebral Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000503:physiopathology; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D015161:Dementia, Multi-Infarct / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000503:physiopathology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008609:Mental Status Schedule / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology / Q000503:physiopathology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015588:Observer Variation; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed