The assessment for living with aphasia: reliability and construct validity

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Aphasia significantly impacts quality of life.
• Validated self-report measures are crucial for assessing aphasia-related quality of life.
• The Assessment for Living with Aphasia (ALA) is a pictographic measure designed for this purpose.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the test-re-test reliability of the ALA.
• To assess the construct validity of the ALA using established reference measures.
• To determine the ALA's ability to discriminate between different levels of aphasia severity.

Main Methods:

• 101 participants with aphasia completed the ALA on two occasions.
• Test-re-test reliability was assessed using intra-class correlations (ICC).
• Internal consistency was measured using Cronbach's alpha; construct validity was examined against three reference tests.

Main Results:

• Excellent test-re-test reliability for the ALA total score (ICC = .86).
• Acceptable to high internal consistency and moderate-to-strong reliability for adapted WHO ICF domains.
• Significant correlations found between ALA and reference measures (SAQOL-39, VASES, BOSS CAPD), indicating good construct validity.

Conclusions:

• The ALA demonstrates acceptable test-re-test reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity.
• The ALA effectively discriminates between aphasia severity groups, particularly in language impairment, participation, and total scores.
• The ALA is a user-friendly tool that captures essential aspects of living with aphasia.