CHAPTER 52: BEHAVIOR RATING INVENTORY OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION—ADULT VERSION (BRIEF-A)

Description

The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function—Adult Version (BRIEF-A) by Gioia et al. (2002) is a self-report/informant-based questionnaire designed to measure a person’s self-regulation in his or her everyday environment and is intended for numerous populations where executive impairment is suspected such as developmental disorders, cognitive impairment including neurocognitive disorders of the Alzheimer’s and related types, traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression, or psychiatric illnesses (Dean & Dean, 2012). Developed as an extension of the original BRIEF, the BRIEF-A is considered a composite of two indexes: the Behavioral Regulation Index (BRI) and the Metacognitive Index (MI) (Rabin et al., 2006). The BRI index is comprised of four subscales: (1) inhibit, (2) shift, (3) emotional control, and (4) self-monitor, while the MI index comprises five subscales: (1) initiate, (2) working memory, (3) plan/organize, (4) task monitor, and (5) organization of materials (Rabin et al., 2006). The measure contains 75 items that explore such issues as “I have angry outbursts,” “I forget my name,” and “I make careless errors when completing tasks,” which are scored along a scale from often to never. The BRIEF-A takes approximately 20 minutes to complete and yields an overall score called the Global Executive Composite (GEC). Scores are also calculated for each of the subscales which in turn yield three validity scales relative to negativity, infrequency, and inconsistency (Rabin et al., 2006). Higher scores reflect greater executive impairment.

Psychometrics

Author established internal consistency found that for the self-report form coefficients ranged from α = 0.73 to 0.90 for the norm sample of 1050 subjects and α = 0.80 to 0.94 for a mixed sample of clinical patients with schizophrenia and healthy adults (n = 233) (Dean & Dean, 2012). The same study found correlation coefficients for the BRI, MI, and GEC subscales ranged from 0.93 to 0.96 for the norm and 0.96 to 0.98 for the mixed sample, also suggesting strong internal consistency. Similar results were produced for the informant-report-based version where coefficients ranged from 0.80 to 0.93 for the norm (n = 1200) and 0.85 to 0.95 for the mixed sample (n = 196) (Dean & Dean, 2012). The study also determined that the informant-based BRI, MI, and GEC subscales had internal consistency scores that ranged from α = 0.95 to 0.98 for the norm sample and α = 0.96 to 0.98 for the mixed sample (Dean & Dean, 2012). A subsequent study of informant ratings of 89 individuals diagnosed with TBI demonstrated good reliability at r = 0.94 and 0.96 and also determined that each index measured a latent trait which separated individuals into five or six ability levels (Waid-Ebbs, Wen, Heaton, Donovan, & Velozo, 2012).

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