The performance of healthy Maltese adults on the Maltese aphasia screening test

Abstract

The lack of standardized and normed tools for the assessment of Maltese speaking people with aphasia poses a challenge on local Speech and Language Pathologists, who must rely on other tools for the assessment and management of aphasia. The use of aphasia assessments which are not standardized on our population or have unestablished psychometric properties may cause inaccuracies in the interpretation of results which in turn impacts the quality of intervention. The aim of this research was to improve the clinical use of the Maltese Aphasia Screening Test (MAST) by presenting normative data for typically ageing adults, with the independent variables being age, gender and years of education, and by establishing its psychometric properties. This was done through the use of secondary data which was collected from a sample of 261 Maltese speaking adults with no history of neurological damage and another sample of 35 individuals following a stroke, 16 of whom were classified with aphasia. The MAST was designed as an impairment-based comprehensive aphasia screening test. Analysis of the performance of healthy Maltese individuals revealed that the demographic variables of age, gender and years of education have an effect on an individual’s performance on the MAST, with age and education having the most significant impact. Age appeared to be the strongest predictor, followed by years of education. This outcome may be related to the fact that older adults in the normative sample reported less years of education. A significant difference between the performance of individuals with aphasia and those without aphasia was evident. However, MAST scores are insufficient to differentiate between individuals with and without aphasia since some participants without aphasia obtained very low scores which overlapped with those of participants with aphasia The psychometric properties of the MAST were investigated through construct validity, concurrent validity, inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability. These measures showed that the MAST is a reliable and valid tool for the identification of language difficulties related to aphasia following a stroke. This confirms that the MAST can be used as a clinical tool for Maltese individuals with aphasia. However, further research on clinical populations is necessary.