Reliability and Validity of the Spanish Version of the Executive Function Performance Test (EFPT) in Assessing People in Treatment for Substance Addiction.

IMPORTANCE

Assessing people's executive function (EF) during addiction treatment makes it possible to design individualized occupational goals.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the reliability and validity of the Spanish version of the Executive Function Performance Test (EFPT) in the occupational assessment of people being treated for substance addiction.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional, observational study to determine the EFPT's internal consistency as well as its convergent and discriminant validity with complementary tests.

SETTING

A public, free addiction treatment center operated by Madrid Salud (Madrid City Council, Spain).

PARTICIPANTS

Fifty-two people referred to an occupational therapy department for evaluation and intervention. Inclusion was based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision) criteria for substance abuse or dependence; the exclusion criterion consisted of any circumstances that made it difficult for a person to understand or perform the test.

OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

The EFPT, other occupational tests (Allen Cognitive Level Screen-5, Lowenstein Occupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment), and a battery of neuropsychological EF tests.

RESULTS

The EFPT had an unequivocal unifactorial structure and showed strong correlations between its components and adequate consistency with the scales and the complete test. As expected, the EFPT correlated with the neuropsychological tests with a considerable effect size (-.40 < r < -.60).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

The EFPT's psychometric properties are adequate to assess the EF of people being treated for substance addiction from an occupational perspective using real activities of daily living (ADLs).

WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS

The results show that the EFPT can be used to assess performance of ADLs without needing to use tests from disciplines other than occupational therapy. Further studies in different sociocultural settings are needed to generalize the results.