Analysis of the psychometric properties of Color Trail Test in Brazilian elderly with low education

• Grant number: 10/02649-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2010
• End date: June 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: José Geraldo Speciali
• Grantee: Fernanda Belinassi Balarini
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto (FMRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Color Trail Test (CTT) is a new version of the Trail Making Test (TMT) that was created to minimize the influence of the educacional and cultural factors, in the evaluation of the attention and its components, by the substitution of the use of the alphabet letters for the use of the color. Therefore, facing the requirement of neuropsychologic assessment instruments to the elderly in Brazil, the present study aims the adaptation of the Color Trail Test (CTT) to the Brazilian context, focusing on its approuch to the elderly. The instrument adaptation includes the translation of its instructions to the Portuguese language, as well as the analysis of its reliability and its validity to the Brazilian population. Thus, it will be necessary a sample of 90 volunteers (30 healthy volunteers - NL; 30 patients with Alzheimer Desease - DA; and 30 patients with Vascular Dementia - DV), between ages of 60 and 80 years old and educacional level between 2 and 8 years. The volunteers will respond to a brief questionnaire about autobiographical data, health state and the Mini Mental State Examination (MEEM). The reliability analysis will be established with the NL group, and the CTT will be administered, individually, in two separate sessions (test-retest method) with one month between them. The validity analysis will be made in two manners: convergent validity and criterion-related validity. In the first, the CTT and the Test of Sustained and Divided Attention will be administered to the NL group, individually. In the second, the CTT will be administered to all volunteers (NL, DA and DV), individually, and the results of the NL group will be compared with the DA group and DV group. All the results will be analyzed by the program Statistical Package for the Social Science 15.0 (SPSS). Initially, the data will be coded according to the CTT technical standards, in order to elaborate its descriptive statistics. The reliability analysis will be presented by Test-Retest correlations with T score and Pearson product moment correlations for the CTT time variables. Remaining CTT variables will be established by paired-samples t tests. Pearson product moment correlations will be also used to calculate the convergent validity, where the results from CTT and Test of Sustained and Divided Attention will be correlated. For the criterion-related validity the three volunteer groups (NL, DA and DV) will be paired by age and educacional level. Following, the healthy group and the patients groups (DA and DV) will be compared by independent-samples t tests. (AU)