| Neuropsychological assessment of bilingual or non-English speaking older individuals with cognitive decline in the United States is often lacking standards, language-sensitivity, and ascertainment of methodological equivalence of translated instruments. This is especially worrisome as language is among the major declining functions in individuals with dementing illnesses. Thus, having an instrument both methodologically properly translated and sensitive to cross-lingual cognitive experiences seems to be a necessity in the field of cross-cultural assessment. This replication study described the Russian-language adaptation of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS, Christopher Randolph, 1998) on a group of ninety-five middle age to older first-generation native Russian-speaking immigrants in Minnesota, to test if the adopted Russian-language RBANS retains psychometric qualities of the original English-language battery. The study found no significant differences between the performances of two samples (this study and the standardization sample) across all ages and levels of education on all RBANS Indices, with the exception of Attention Index, thus supporting a premise of adequate psychometric qualities of the Russian version of the RBANS and its potential clinical usefulness. This major finding as well as other findings and their implications for testing, professional training, and cross-cultural research were discussed in light of the etic-emic continuum. |
