The Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Color Trails Test in Evaluating Frontal Assessment Among Turkish Patients with Schizophrenia

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Color Trails Test (CTT) in the Turkish patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Methods: The study was carried out with a sample of 47 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia according to the DSM-IV and to 20 healthy individuals (controls) who were matched for age, sex and education. The CTT, Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) and Verbal Fluency Test (VFT) has been applied to all subjects. Results: Criterion related validity of the C7T (1 and 2) was shown with significant correlation between all administered test and sub-test. Regarding validity of discriminating power for specific groups, the CTT showed that schizophrenic individuals performed significantly worse than healthy controls (z:-4.515, p<0.001, for CTT-1; z:-5.373, p<0.001, for C77-2). The CTT showed acceptable test-retest reliability (r=0.78 for C7T-1; r=0.94 for CTT-2) and internal consistency (Cronhach's alpha:0.94). Conclusions: Internal reliability, test-retest and item-total score correlation, discriminating power for specific groups and criterion related validity of the CTT have indicated that the scale has acceptable reliability and validity for the Turkish patients with' schizophrenia for frontal assessment.