Eight-Day Temporal Stability of the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metric (ANAM) in a Deployment Environment

Abstract

Automated neurocognitive tests are commonly used by military providers for making clinical decisions about the recovery of postconcussive cognitive sequelae. This practice often utilizes baseline assessments that precede the concussive injury. As such, investigating and establishing the psychometrics of an instrument is necessary to minimize confounds for interpreting assessment scores. Test–retest reliability (TRR) values for an 8.3 ± 2-day retest window for the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics-Version 4 (ANAM) were calculated in 86 healthy U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Iraq. After removal of outliers, all but 1 subtest, Simple Reaction Time, had adequate or greater TRR values (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.72–0.86). The findings suggest that overall, the ANAM has good temporal stability when the retesting intertrial interval is less than 11 days while in a deployed environment.

Key words:

• ANAM
• military
• neurocognitive
• test–retest reliability

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors acknowledge the assistance of numerous individuals whose efforts were critical in the performance of this study. We thank the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, specifically SSG David Lopez and SGT Pedro Cruz for their diligent data collection efforts, and the editorial team for their insightful contribution.