ANALYZING MULTIVARIATE NEUROBEHAVIORAL OUTCOMES IN OCCUPATIONAL STUDIES - A COMPARISON OF APPROACHES

Neurobehavioral studies often employ test batteries and confront issue s of multiple testing and comparability between batteries. We have org anized our battery of 12 tests into areas of neurobehavioral function to reduce the number of reported results, provide greater statistical power, and improve interpretability of the results. We explored severa l different organizational and statistical methods of creating summary scores including a priori groupings based upon clinical experience an d factor analysis. We compared the sensitivity of these summary scores to performance changes associated with exposure to styrene in the man ufacture of reinforced plastics. Our results demonstrated dramatic inc reases in power to detect exposure related changes compared to using i ndividual test scores. Furthermore, the various methods provided gener ally compatible and comparable results. We encourage other neurobehavi oral investigators to pursue and refine this approach.