Item analysis of the Spanish version of the Boston Naming Test with a Spanish speaking adult population from Colombia.

OBJECTIVE

The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is a widely used measure of confrontation naming ability that has been criticized for its questionable construct validity for non-English speakers. This study investigated item difficulty and construct validity of the Spanish version of the BNT to assess cultural and linguistic impact on performance.

METHODS

Subjects were 1298 healthy Spanish speaking adults from Colombia. They were administered the 60- and 15-item Spanish version of the BNT. A Rasch analysis was computed to assess dimensionality, item hierarchy, targeting, reliability, and item fit.

RESULTS

Both versions of the BNT satisfied requirements for unidimensionality. Although internal consistency was excellent for the 60-item BNT, order of difficulty did not increase consistently with item number and there were a number of items that did not fit the Rasch model. For the 15-item BNT, a total of 5 items changed position on the item hierarchy with 7 poor fitting items. Internal consistency was acceptable.

CONCLUSIONS

Construct validity of the BNT remains a concern when it is administered to non-English speaking populations. Similar to previous findings, the order of item presentation did not correspond with increasing item difficulty, and both versions were inadequate at assessing high naming ability.