Halstead's category test: Withstanding the test of time

Abstract

In spite of demonstrated validity, Halstead's Category Test has been criticized as overly time consuming. In order to evaluate this assumption, groups of severely head-injured and general neurological cases were administered the Category Test as part of routine evaluation, and the time to completion of the test was recorded. The results indicated that 93% of the patients completed the test in less than 1 h and that 50% completed it in less than 40 min. In 81% of the cases, the test lasted from 20–50 min.