Reliability and validity of bedside version of Arabic Diagnostic Aphasia Battery (A-DAB-1) for Lebanese individuals

ABSTRACT

Background: There are several clinical aphasia assessment tools for screening and rehabilitation purposes in different languages. They are used globally to determine important aspects of language functioning in brain damaged individuals. Despite this, a valid bedside operational assessment tool is not available in Arabic to determine the level and severity of aphasia in Lebanese brain damaged patients.

Aims: The aim of the present study was to develop the bedside version of Arabic Diagnostic Aphasia Battery (A-DAB-1) to measure severity of aphasia for rehabilitation purposes in Lebanese Arabic-speaking people with aphasia (PWA).

Methods & Procedures: This study followed the theoretical framework of the WAB-R as well as connected speech analysis framework of P-WAB-1 developed for Persian (Persian Western Aphasia Battery). An expert native speaking panel was employed to evaluate the faithful translation of A-DAB-1 for matching the sociolinguistic properties of Arabic spoken in Lebanon using the Delphi method. The content validity ratio (CVR) was determined, and the new version of the test was administered to 60 healthy native Arabic-speaking adults living in Lebanon to obtain norms. The final version was administered to 30 Lebanese Arabic-speaking cerebrovascular accident (CVA) PWA introduced by a neurologist. The internal consistency and the test-retest were determined by reassessing ten PWA within 2–4 weeks interval.

Outcomes & Results: The results of this study indicated that A-DAB-1 is a valid and reliable bedside clinical assessment tool. It achieved CVR 0.75 and an acceptable internal consistency (alpha = 0.961) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.988 p. Also A-DAB-1 showed a good clinical utility to differentiate between normal individuals and the performance of PWA as an operational index of severity.

Conclusions: Based on the result, A-DAB-1 can be used as a valid clinical assessment tool for screening aphasia in bedside and to determine the severity of aphasia and efficacy of language intervention in Lebanese Arabic-speaking PWA.

KEYWORDS:

• A-DAB-1
• aphasia
• CVA
• Aphasia Quotient (AQ)
• Levantine Arabic

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our gratitude to Rassoul El Aazam Hospital, the Department of Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy at Cortbawi Hospital, Nabih Berry Handicapped Center, and all the collaborators; Hiba Kassir, Maria Zakria, Zahya Ghaddar, Sanaa Khoury, Marwa Summaka and Dr. Ghada Al-Khattab who helped us in collecting the data for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by Deputy of Research, USWRS, and Cognitive Sciences and Technology Council, Iran [568]. to the second author.