Translation, Cultural Adaptation, and Validity of Barnes Language Assessment in Persian Ageing Population: A Preliminary Study

Introduction: As the global population ages, the need for sensitive language assessments for dementia increases. While the Barnes language assessment (BLA) is a valuable tool in English, it has not been translated and validated for Persian-speaking populations. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional translated and culturally adapted the BLA into Persian (BLA-Per) and evaluated its psychometric properties. The translation process followed the international quality of life assessment protocol. The BLA-Per was administered to 30 healthy older adults and 30 individuals with Alzheimer disease (AD). Test-retest reliability was assessed in the AD group. Statistical data analysis was performed using the SPSS software (version 24) at a significance level of 0.05. Results: Due to significant differences between the patients and cognitively healthy groups regarding age and education years, we used the analysis of covariance to control for these variables’ effects on between-group comparisons. Significant differences in BLA-Per scores were observed between healthy controls and AD patients in 8 out of 14 test components, demonstrating good discriminative validity. Intra-class correlation coefficients for test-retest reliability were above 0.75 for most subtests. Conclusion: The BLA-Per demonstrated good validity and reliability in assessing language impairments in Persian-speaking individuals with AD. Future research should investigate the BLA-Per in larger samples across different age groups and stages of AD.