The 30-item and 15-item Boston naming test Czech version: Item response analysis and normative values for healthy older adults

ABSTRACT

Objective

The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is the most widely used test to assess visual confrontation naming in both research and clinical settings. Recently, an abbreviated Czech version of the BNT was described. The purpose of this study is to assess the validity of this new test at the item level with advanced psychometric methods to assess its equivalence with the original test. The rationale was to help busy clinicians in the differential diagnosis of language disorders.

Method

We administered the BNT-30 (odd item form of BNT-60) (N = 535; 75.61 ± 9.11; 60–96 years) and shortened the BNT-15 (N = 754; 71.94 ± 7.88; 60–96 years) to a large sample of healthy older adults.

Results

Significant but low associations between BNT performance and age, education, and sex were found. We found strong evidence for the unidimensionality of both BNT-15/BNT-30 versions in healthy adults (p’s < .001).

Conclusion

In-depth psychometric analysis of the BNT-15 and BNT-30 Czech versions show that test stimuli function in a similar fashion as the original BNT. Normative values adjusting for the influence of age, education, and sex are provided for use in clinical settings and future cross-cultural comparisons.

KEYWORDS:

• Boston naming test
• visual confrontation naming
• item response theory
• item difficulty/easiness
• construct validity
• normative data
• picture naming

Authors’ note

All data can be obtained from the first author on request.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the work of all participants including their families and all the assessors (Eva Biedermannova, Pavla Davidova, Eva Elsikova, Lenka Freharova Javurkova, Zuzana Frydrychova, Alzbeta Gilikova, Marketa Holubova, Karolina Horakova, Adela Jencova, Eva Jendrulkova, Olga Kozicka, Lenka Malkova, Dagmar Malotova, Jiri Michalec, Jana Michalcova, Barbora Mnukova, Vlasta Novotna, Erika Panenkova, Klara Patlichova, Jana Pecinkova, Lucie Prazakova, Ilona Sedmidubska, Lenka Sreibrova, Romana Stambergova, Nina Sterbova, Eva Suchomelova, Tomas Vacha, Martin Vaverka, Zuzana Velkoborska, Michaela Viktorinova, Marie Vingarkova, and Tomas Vilimovsky).

We would like to thank anonymous reviewers that helped significantly to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

Authors Ondrej Bezdicek, Anna Marie Rosická, Josef Mana, Miloslav Kopeček, Hana Georgi. David J. Libon receives royalties from Oxford University Press and Linus Health.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, grant [NT13145-4/2012 and AZV NU21-04-00535] and NEURIPIDES, grant [8F21005] and by the Czech Science Foundation, under grant number [18-06199S] and grant COURAGE [GA17-14829S], and from Charles University under grant PROGRES Q27/LF1.