A-220 Hooper Visual Organization Test: Item Analyses and Scale Performance in a Nonclinical Adult Sample

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Abstract Objective: The 30-item Hooper Visual Organization Test (HVOT) measures visuospatial synthesis. While satisfactory reliability estimates have been reported, some items show poor discrimination and items do not appear to be ordered by increasing difficulty level. Little psychometric evidence, however, has been gathered with healthy nonclinical adults in North America. Examination of item performance in healthy adult samples aids in understanding what might be clinically noteworthy in neurological or psychiatric patients. Thus, we examined HVOT total score performance, item difficulty and discrimination, internal consistency reliability, and correlations of HVOT total scores with demographic and neuropsychological variables in a healthy adult sample in Canada. Method: Participant were 71 cognitively intact, non-depressed men and women ages 21-82 years (M=51.5, SD=18.3), with 9-21 years of education (M=15.0, SD=2.79), recruited from the general community. Participants were tested individually on various neuropsychological tests (HVOT, MMSE, Block Design, ROCF, Trails, Five Point Test, FAS/Animals, Vocabulary). Results: Items ranged in difficulty (0.16-1.00) but tended to be easy (M=0.82). Item discrimination ranged from -.17 to.47. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.62. Total scores ranged from 17-29.5 out of 30 (M=25.4) and correlated significantly with age, MMSE, Block Design, ROCF, Trails, and Animals (r=|.29|-|.44|). Conclusions: Our results suggest that some HVOT items are too easy and/or show poor discrimination. Items are not well-ordered by difficulty. We discuss some notable divergences from proposed re-orderings from clinical samples. Demographic results fit with the literature; correlations with other measures extend previous findings. Our results serve as a guide for revisions and a useful baseline for clinical comparison.