Cross-Cultural adaptation of Executive Function Tests for Assessments of traumatic brain injury patients in Southeast Iran

The Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) is a “greatest hits” collection of commonly used tests of executive functioning. We mainly aimed to develop a Persian version of D-KEFS for brain-damaged patients in Zahedan, Iran, and to provide preliminary validation evidence, applying a normal sample with demographic traits of the patients. In the judgmental phase, in order to conduct several local field studies and non-standard pilot administrations, we made various cross-cultural adaptations. For the statistical phase, the provided materials along with four tests from the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS) were administered to 75 healthy individuals. Within 12 to 30 days, 24 subjects were retested. Relatively high reliabilities were obtained for most of the D-KEFS measures. In validity analysis, strong correlations were found among the majority of the scores within the tests; correlations between various D-KEFS tests were in the range of weak to moderate; and significant correlations were found between the majority of D-KEFS executive scores and BADS scores. In conclusion, the adapted tests show acceptable psychometric properties in assessing the complex, multidimensional construct of executive functioning.