AMSTERDAM-NIJMEGEN EVERYDAY LANGUAGE TEST - CONSTRUCTION, RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

The Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT) is designed to measure, first, the level of verbal communicative abilities of aphasic patients and, second, changes in these abilities over time. The level of communicative effectiveness is determined by the adequacy of bringing a message across. Verbal communication is operationally defined as a function of the understandability of the message and the intelligibility of the utterance. Test items are constructed as scenarios of familiar daily life situations. Two parallel versions have been constructed, each consisting of 10 items; responses for every item are scored on two five-point scales. The psychometric analysis shows perfect parallelism for both test versions. Each scale for judging verbal communication is unidimensional in nature and measures only the construct it purports to measure. Criterion-related, as well as construct validity, measures show ANELT to be a sensitive instrument for measuring verbal communication in a language-disturbed population. The test is well suited for individual diagnostic and therapy evaluation procedures as well as for more fundamental research.