The BRIEF-A, a gold standard on shaky ground: An item-level reassessment of its factorial structure

Executive function assessment is central in clinical practice and research, and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version (BRIEF-A) is widely used in adults. However, its nine-factor structure has rarely been evaluated with contemporary factor-analytic standards, prompting this study to examine its factorial validity and propose a psychometrically robust alternative.

Adult participants completed the French version of the BRIEF-A, including a university student sample (N = 775) and a community adult sample (N = 1599). Factorial validity was examined using confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses, conducted on manifest items. A split-sample cross-validation procedure was applied to item-level analyses to identify a reduced item configuration reflecting the latent structure.

None of the traditional BRIEF-A factor structures reported in the literature demonstrated acceptable model fit, whether analyses were based on individual items or parceled scores. In contrast, a six-factor, 24-item solution emerged, showing strong model fit, accounting for approximately 50% of the variance, and replicating across samples.

The 24-item configuration provides a parsimonious representation of response patterns associated with adult executive functioning compared with the original 70-item organization. These findings concern the latent structure of BRIEF-A responses and do not constitute an alternative instrument. Future studies should examine the factorial structure of the BRIEF-A in clinical populations to further assess the robustness and generalizability of these findings.