Reliability and Validity of the BRIEF-A for Assessing Deaf College Students’ Executive Function

This study investigated the reliability and validity of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions–Adult Form (BRIEF-A) when used with deaf college students. The BRIEF-A was administered to 176 deaf and 184 hearing students of whom 25 deaf students and 56 hearing students self-identified as having an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses. Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency reliabilities for the deaf participants ranged from .55 to .96, similar to the published BRIEF-A normative sample. Differential Item Function analysis revealed that only 3 of the 75 items showed evidence of item bias for deaf students. The participants with ADHD had significantly higher scores on all nine scales. Discriminant analysis revealed comparable sensitivity and specificity of the BRIEF-A for discriminating ADHD from non-ADHD individuals for deaf and hearing groups. Finally, the deaf and hearing ADHD groups exhibited score profiles across the nine BRIEF-A scales that followed the pattern of the BRIEF-A ADHD clinical sample profile. The results suggest that the BRIEF-A is a reliable, largely unbiased diagnostic tool for deaf college students, with comparable discriminant and predictive validity for ADHD.