Responsiveness and predictive validity of the computerized digit vigilance test in patients with stroke

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the responsiveness and predictive validity of the computerized digit vigilance test (C-DVT) in inpatients receiving rehabilitation following stroke.

Methods: Forty-nine patients completed the C-DVT and the Barthel Index (BI) after admission to and before discharge from the rehabilitation ward. The standardized response mean (SRM) was used to examine the responsiveness of the C-DVT. We used a paired t-test to determine the statistical significance of the changes in scores on the C-DVT. We estimated the predictive validity of the C-DVT with the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) to investigate the association between the scores of the C-DVT at admission and the scores of the BI at discharge.

Results: Our data showed a small SRM (−0.31) and a significant difference (paired t-test, p = 0.034) between the C-DVT scores at admission and discharge. These findings indicate that the C-DVT can appropriately detect changes in sustained attention. In addition, we found a moderate association (r = 0.48) between the scores of the C-DVT at admission and the scores of the BI at discharge, suggesting the sufficient predictive validity of the C-DVT.

Conclusions: Our results showed that the C-DVT had adequate responsiveness and sufficient predictive validity in inpatients receiving rehabilitation following stroke.

Implications for rehabilitation

• The computerized digit vigilance test (C-DVT) had adequate responsiveness to be an outcome measure for assessing the sustained attention in inpatients receiving rehabilitation after stroke.

• The C-DVT had sufficient predictive validity to predict daily function in inpatients receiving rehabilitation after stroke.

Keywords:

• Stroke
• attention
• responsiveness
• validity

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all participants for their involvement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.