| Serial assessments are often used in neuropsychology to document disease progression, monitor recovery from injury, and evaluate efficacy of therapeutic interventions. Despite the frequency of serial assessments, adequate information needed to appropriately assess change on neuropsychological measures is often not available. Interpreting change accurately is a complex endeavor as one must account for factors that can impact variations in test performance, including reliability of the measure, practice effects, statistical artifacts, retest interval length, and client characteristics. Executive functioning is an important aspect of cognition that can be affected in many neurodegenerative processes as well as in healthy aging. Understanding the meaning of change scores on tasks of executive function in older adults is essential due to the relationship between the scores and functional independence. The purpose of the present project was to aggregate data from the literature through meta-analysis in order to provide a comprehensive framework for clinicians and researchers to determine reliable change on common measures of executive function in healthy older adults. Meta-analyses were conducted on only two common tests of executive function due to incomplete reporting in the literature. Results suggest marginal to high test-retest reliability for the Trail Making Test and the Stroop Color and Word Test. Implications of relying on test-retest reliability for determining change on tests of executive functioning are discussed, as well as recommendations related to change using process variables. Guidelines for reporting test-retest data are also provided. |
