Aims: In the rehabilitation literature, neuropsychological tests are cited as the best measures of impairment in cognitive abilities, being more objective than global and functional measures. However, there are some methodological issues of using tests as a measure of impairment after traumatic brain injury (TBI), one of them being their translation and adaptation. Therefore, after translation and adaptation of the Controlled Oral Word Association (COWA) from MAE battery, by special permission of the publisher, Psychological Assessment Resources, the aims of our study were 1. To examine the correlation between COWA test with gender and education; and 2. To examine the concurrent and predictive validity of COWA test in patients undergoing rehabilitation after TBI. Method: COWA test was applied in a group of healthy participants (N=60) and a group of patients at the end of inpatient rehabilitation after TBI (N=91). We compared the results of COWA test and other neuropsychological measures with the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) at the discharge from rehabilitation and the Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ) one year after TBI. Results and discussion: The results in the healthy participants’ group showed comparability of the Croatian translation of the COWA test with data from the literature and a statistically significant correlation between COWA and education. COWA test results of the TBI group at discharge were significantly lower than those of the comparable group. COWA showed the highest correlation with FIM communication items and a moderately high correlation with CIQ one year after TBI.

neuropsychological assessment, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, validation, traumatic brain injury