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  • Ecological validity of neuropsychological interventions: A systematic review
    Publication . Pinto, Joana O.; Pontes, Diogo; Peixoto, Bruno; Dores, Artemisa R.; Barbosa, Fernando
    The concept of ecological validity (EV) in neuropsychological interventions (NI) has been consistently advocated, but there is a lack of reviews focused on how EV is operationalized in NI programmes. This review aims to address this gap by exploring the outcome measures more commonly used for assessing EV and to understand the main characteristics of programmes with good EV. A literature search was conducted to identify studies that examined the EV of NI programmes, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and the Cochrane Collaboration Guidelines. A total of twenty-seven studies were included in this review. Among these, only three studies explicitly described the procedures used to assess EV. Additionally, almost half of the studies assumed that interventions had good EV based on the characteristics of the programmes. The inconsistent assessment of EV of NI programmes prevented the identification of specific characteristics of programmes demonstrating good EV. This systematic review reveals a significant gap in the literature concerning the operationalization of EV within the field of NI. Further research is required to establish a consistent definition of EV in the context of NI and to develop criteria for its effective operationalization.
  • Ecological validity in neurocognitive assessment: Systematized review, content analysis, and proposal of an instrument
    Publication . Pinto, Joana O.; Dores, Artemisa Rocha; Peixoto, Bruno; Barbosa, Fernando
    The main objectives of this study are to identify the dimensions of Ecological Validity(EV) within the definitions of this concept, understand how they are operationalized in neurocog-nitive tests, and propose a checklist for EV attributes in neurocognitive tests. A systematized review was combined with content analysis of the selected papers, usingthe inductive method. We analyzed 82 studies on the EV of neurocognitive tests, 19 literaturereviews and 63 empirical studies. Based on this review, we identified the relevant criteria for evalu-ating EV. EV is a multidimensional concept with two main dimensions: representativeness and gen-eralization. Representativeness involves the subdimensions simplicity-complexity and artificial-nat-ural and several criteria organized on a continuum from low EV to high EV. Generalization isdependent on representativeness and is influenced by different cognitive and non-cognitive fac-tors. We propose six stages for operationalizing EV, from defining the objectives of the neurocog-nitive assessment to the methodology for scoring and interpreting the results.This systematized review helps to operationalize the concept of EV by providing atool for evaluating and improving EV while developing new tests. Further studies with a longitu-dinal design can compare the predictive value of tests with higher versus lower EV-checklistscores.