Brief Montreal-Toulouse Language Assessment Battery: validity and reliability

AbstractTo present evidence of the validity and reliability of the Brief MTL-BR Battery, a screening tool for language assessment for people with aphasia (PWA). The sample consisted of 138 participants, including 96 neurologically healthy adults and 42 individuals with aphasia. Construct validity was investigated through convergent validity. To examine convergent validity, correlations between the Brief MTL-BR and the Montreal Toulouse Language Assessment Battery - MTL-BR tasks were used. Criterion validity was determined using Holm-Bonferroni to compare people with aphasia and healthy adults. Reliability was determined through inter-rater (Interclass Correlation Coefficients), the test-retest method (Interclass Correlation Coefficients), and internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha). The Brief MTL-BR demonstrated satisfactory construct validity, with correlation coefficients ranging from substantial to very strong (0.553 to 0.862). The assessment of criterion validity demonstrated significant differences between neurologically healthy adults and people with aphasia on all tasks examined. Reliability assessments revealed excellent inter-rater agreement (0.972 to 1). All tasks in the Brief MTL-BR Battery displayed Cronbach’s alpha values above 0.88. Significant correlations between tasks and retest scores were identified ranging from good to excellent (0.752 to 0.967). The present findings support the reliability and validity of the Brief MTL-BR Battery.