Evaluation instruments for executive functions in children and adolescents: a systematic review

The present study aimed to perform a systematic review of instruments for evaluating the executive functions (EFs) in a pediatric population to assess their measurement properties, focusing on the professional who administers it.

A systematic search of the literature was performed on Cinahl, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science and Medline to identify studies in which an instrument for evaluating the EFs was described. Included only were the papers reporting the evaluation of EFs, with any instrument, on a population aged 0 to 18 consisting of healthy individuals or people with neurodevelopmental disorder. The evaluation of the Risk of Bias has been carried out with the administration of a part of the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) Checklist.

The search ended on the 2nd of August. Only 19 articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study; the papers refer to 16 different evaluation tools of the EF. Analysis of the methodological quality shows that most of the papers assessed received an 'inadequate' or 'insufficient' score. Indeed, only two articles received six or five 'sufficient' out of 8 items; instead, ten papers received one or zero 'sufficient.'