Executive Functions for People Who

¶ … executive functions for people who have had strokes, but most of these have used specific assessment tests and have actually looked at their difficulties in a real world way. How people perform on a test and what they are capable of doing as a function of normal, daily life are often not the same, and this is especially true for people who have had strokes and might be having difficulty doing the things that they used to do in the past.

What is the study design that is implemented in this study? Explain the characteristics in the study that support your choice of study design.

The design for this study was a survey of stroke patients six months after they had their event and was coupled with a group of healthy volunteers who took the same test and performed the same tasks, with the goal being to see whether there were actual differences between what a stroke patient could do and what a nurse who had evaluated them determined that they could do. The EFPT was used in this study because it deals with whether people can perform certain tasks and at what level they are able to do so.

3.State and classify the variables of the study.

Variables of this study were: race and gender for independent variables, and level of stroke for dependent variables.

4.What are the distinguishing characteristics of the EFPT compared to current/existing performance based assessments?

With EFPT the measure of ability that a person has and the level that he or she is at can be more easily studied. This is very different from the other assessment tests which are more black and white in whether a person can do something. As such, the EFPT is more realistic when it comes to whether a person can do something in the real world or whether that person would need help to perform a specific task.

5.State how the variables were operationalized.

Variables were operationalized by defining them in terms that could be measured. In other words, what a person could or could not do based on the severity of his or her stroke had to be broken down and addressed as real world tasks such as cooking a simple meal, making a phone call, and paying bills.

6.Define reliability. Discuss the means by which reliability of the instrument/measure was assessed in this study.

In this study, reliability was very important. This is the extent to which the study or the instrument that is used in the study measures accurately. An instrument that has not been used before or that is being used in a way that is not common for it can have questionable reliability. In order to avoid that for this study, reliability of the EFPT was measured through trained raters who rated participants. How they were rated by the EFPT and by the other raters were then compared.

7.Define validity. How was validity of the instruments assessed in this study?

In order to determine whether the instrument was valid, there was construct validity and criterion validity that had to be tested. Construct validity is requiring a test to be able to distinguish between people who have and who do not have a known trait. This was assessed by determining whether the EFPT was able to distinguish people based on their level of stroke. Criterion validity was determined by comparing the EFPT scores with a lot of scores that were established for these same patients on neuropsychological tests.

8.Summarize Table 1.