Verbal fluency in a national sample: Telephone administration methods.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Public Health Research

Background:

• Verbal fluency assessment is crucial for cognitive health evaluation.
• Traditional in-person assessments limit large-scale data collection.
• Novel methods are needed to assess cognitive function in diverse populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce novel telephone-based methods for assessing verbal fluency in a large national adult sample.
• To investigate demographic factors influencing verbal fluency performance.
• To compare telephone-based assessment results with traditional in-person methods.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study.
• Administered telephone-based letter (Letter "F") and semantic (Animal Naming) fluency tests.
• Employed computer-assisted scoring of digital recordings for large-scale analysis.

Main Results:

• Obtained initial scores from 18,505 (letter) and 18,072 (semantic) participants.
• Demonstrated normally distributed scores for both fluency tests.
• Found younger age and higher education significantly associated with better performance (p < 0.0001).
• Reported comparable mean and standard deviations to in-person assessment studies for matched subgroups.
• Highlighted enhanced quality control via telephone assessment compared to in-person methods.

Conclusions:

• Telephone-based verbal fluency assessment with computer-assisted scoring enables efficient large-scale data acquisition.
• Scores derived from this method exhibit characteristics similar to traditional assessment techniques.
• These findings validate cognitive assessment using survey research staff and technology for broader application.