The Colorado Cognitive Assessment (CoCA)

The CoCA is a modern cognitive screening tool that has the following features.

• Open access

  • The CoCA is available free of charge to interested and qualified users.

• Items chosen to cover a broad range of ability levels

  • Can be responsive to detecting cognitive changes in both intact and impaired examinees without floor or ceiling effects.

• Broad representation of cognitive domains

  • Allows for generation of cognitive profiles, which may provide greater utility for differential diagnosis.

• Scoring based on confirmatory factor analysis

  • Possesses desirable measurement properties for use in both cross-sectional and longitudinal applications.

• Able to capture processes and errors underlying performance

  • To assist in capturing important data about the cognitive deficits and strategies that underlie observed test scores.

• Embedded forced-choice recognition memory test

  • Provides information about performance validity.

• Item assessing financial decision-making

  • Provides a brief measure of independent functioning.

• Measurement invariance

  • To ensure minimal influence from systematic biases related to sex, education, age, and culture.

Important Links

Research on the CoCA

Gurnani, A. S., Lin, S. S-H., & Gavett, B. E. (2019). The Colorado Cognitive Assessment (CoCA): Development of an advanced neuropsychological screening tool. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. Epub ahead of print. doi:10.1093/arclin/acz066

Gurnani, A. S., Lin, S. S-H., & Gavett, B. E. (2019, February 8). The Colorado Cognitive Assessment (CoCA): Development of an advanced neuropsychological screening tool. doi:10.31234/osf.io/tqckr [preprint]

CoCA Manuals

• The CoCA Administration and Scoring Manual is available at this link.

• The CoCA Psychometric and Technical Manual is available at this link.

CoCA Scoring

• A web app that generates global CoCA factor scores and provides other scoring is available here.

Obtaining the CoCA

The CoCA instrument can be obtained by contacting its developers, Ashita Gurnani or Brandon Gavett. We are seeking collborators who are willing to help validate the CoCA in both clinical and healthy samples.