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Shortened Halstead Category Test

Article in Australian Psychologist March 1975

DOI: 10.1080/00050067508256442

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Gregory J. Boyle
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 Shortened Halstead Category Test

The Halstead Category Test @CT) is burdened by excessive length and

time of admidstration (ICilpaatdck, 1970). Since it is included in the
Halstead-Reitan neurophyscho10gical test battery, and utilized by Russell,
Neurin~er& Coldsteiin (1970) in their .key
. approach',
.. a short form would
be usetQ. .
Split-half reliabiity studies on the HCT, for insta~ce'kil~atrick (1970);
@aw (1960, and Walsh (1970), have given high values (097,098 and
0.98 respectively), which are encouraging for the development of a short
fom. The present study tests the bggestion of Elpatrick (1970) that a
.short form is feasible. In his i r d y of a short form-producedby splitting
the HCT into two halves on the basis of the odd and even numbered items,
he estimated a high reliability coefficielit (0.94). SimiIarly,.in'the present
h a y , a high reliability coefficient (0.93) for the short form, was
estimated from Elpatrick's data, using the Spearman-Brown formula.

Smposition of the Shwt-Fom

Half the items were taken frqm each bf the original Sets I, 11, III, lV
and W,as illustrated in Boyle (1972). Sets V and VI of the oiigioal test
were treated as a single set since they have the same principle of s~lution.
This reduced '&is double set from 80 to 20 items, which was termed Set
VjVL The slprt-form now had 84 items compared @iththe original 208.
Reduction of items decreases the amount of infoqation available to,
the S for him to confirm or disconfm his hypotheses. Hence error scores
would be greater than a simple scaling down from the HCT would indicate.

Subjects
The brain-damaged group consisted of 16 patients (10 male, 6 femde).
The non braiddamagd grliup consisted of 35Ss (17 male, 18female) who
presented no evidence of brain damage. This was based on: (i) no history
of brain dysfun+ion (such as trauma, or epilepsy of any type); (ii) an
1. The authoris indebted to Dr. K W. Walsh of the Department of Psycholigy,
Univerrity of Melbourne, for allowing the use of his normative data.
 impairment index of leis than 1.5 on the HalsteadBReitanbattery (exclud-
ing the HCT). Furthermore, the 8 paraplegics in the non brain-damaged
group had all undergone a complete neurological examination and were
not found to be brain-damaged.'.These all bad low cord baons, and so
theiu arm movements"w&e not affected. Evidence of brain dam+ was
supported by neurological assessment, electroencephalography, brain scan,
angiography, pneumoencephalography, skull X ray, or neurosurgical fmd-
ings, The descriptive characteristicsare presented in Table 1.

TABLE 1

Brak-Damad
RPnge X
-S.D:
N
Rangs
-
Non-Braic-Damaged
x S.D.
N

A s 18-68 41.87 17.77' Agc 16-52 28.11 '1039

!3dncation 6-16 9.56 3.26 Education 5-18 9.80 3.13

Focal E~ilepw(grand-mal type) 5 Paraplegia

EnccPhaIitia (residual effects). 2 Normals
Gunshot Wou* (frontal l o b ) 2
Degcnerafivc . - 2
DenlopmcntPI.Defsct 2
I n d i n Intoxication 1
'Carotid Sten& 1
Cerebral Vasular Discare

The short form was given as part of the Iklstead %itan neuro-
psychological. test battery. For each item on the HCT there are four
. possible responses (one correct in each case). Each separate response to an
item was recorded so that subsequent analysis could determine, if possible,
the qualitative as well as' the quantitative responb'e t o that iteni by. each
5OUP-

RESULTS
~ e a n sand standard errors for both &e bbraindamaged and the non
brain-damaged groups are presented in Table 2, with respect to each
 Shortened Haktad Gategrvy Test 83
subset, and to the test overall. An analy* of covariance with age as the
wvatiate showed that the short form differentiated significantly between
the two groups @<0:01).
, Whilst correlations of both.age and education with performance on the
short form were significant. 0.24 W . 0 5 ) , and -0.44 (pU3.01) respect-
ively, them was no significant difference between the educationd levels
(measured in years of formal education) of the two groups. Since age was
'controUed' statistically, any bias which was due to the age difference
between the two groups was eliminated.

Set N.
Bmin-Damaged
Non-Brain-Damaged

set v/vI
BraibDamaged
Non-Brain-Damaged

Set W
Brain-Damaged
Non-Brain-Damaged

TOTAL
BmimDamaged
Non-Brain-Damaged

Using t tests, aIl sets differentiated signifcantly between the two groups
w . 0 1 ) . except for Set V/VI in which the differences were not
significant.
On many items, simultaneous elevations and depressions were shown
for both groups of Ss. Furthermore, for each subset, rank order com-
]ations between the error scores of each group were all signiticant
@(D.Ol).
 DISCUSSION
The evidence suggests that the short-form differentiates between brain-
damaged patients and non brain-damaged Ss.Even after adjustments for
age were made, the differewe m the quantitativeperfo0rmancesof the two
groups was still highly .signiEcant. A cutting point of 38 errors mis-
-ed 6 per cent of the brain-damaged patients and 22 per cent of the '

non brain-damaged,S. Howenr, until cross mlidated tMs cuttingpbiatis

tentative only.
In failing to discdminate between the two groups, Set V/W would
appear.to be a 'passenger set'. It mtght reasonably.be,eliminated from the
short form altogether. Since Set V/VI.is cgmprised of items from Sets V
and VI of the original test, it might be surmSd that both of these sets fail
to ,differentiate satisfactorily between brain-damaged and non-
bm-damaged Ss also. If this is so, then it would seem pointless in
retatning them. Atone, this simple adjustment to the HCT would r e d t in a
great saving of administration time, wit6 possibly little, if any, loss h.
. .
bscnminative abity.
Overall, the short-f@rm takes only about fifteen minute's to administer.
Wth e-tion of Set VlVI a fat&r reduction in administration.time
.may be achieved with little apparent loss in discximinative poi-er. This
would greatly assist in ensuring the continued participation of the testee.
The Halstead-Rcitanbattery would benefit accordingly.

REFERENCES
Boylc, 0. J. The IIalstesd Oatcgw Test.Unpublished Hoaour's T h i s , Univerdty of
Mchnmc. 1972.
Kilpatdck, D. G. The IkMead Category Test of brain dysfunction: feasibility of a
Short-f~UIU.Parcpt~ald&torA'kiR~,1970,30,577-578.
Russell, E. W., Neu+wr, C and G o W i u . G. Asersmmt of bmin dunage: A
~ulop~cholosrml -
key rrpprmeh Wiley Interscience, 1970.
Shsw, D. J. 238 reliability and validity of the Haktead Catekory Test. hm1 of
Q3rilmlRychology. 1966,W. 176-179.
Walsh, K W. The Ha!shd Citegory Test. Normatiw data on some 300 nomal
subject%Unpubhhcd manuscript, University of Melbourne. 1970.

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