An examination of the psychometric properties and efficacy of Dementia Care Mapping

Abstract

This paper offers a critique of Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) as a practice development and research tool by examining the psychometric properties and efficacy of DCM as a method for evaluating and enhancing care quality and quality of life. Based on a review and analysis of the published empirical studies utilizing DCM, it becomes apparent that there is mixed support for the tool's validity and reliability. More importantly, there is a need for additional studies specifically examining the range of related assessments to provide conclusive evidence for DCM's relevance, applicability and reliability as a practice and research tool in dementia care. The paper identifies methodological issues of implementation and use of DCM, i.e., coding practices, mapping duration. Also, a summary of the tool's strengths and limitations in practice and research settings, areas for improvement and future research avenues is provided.

Does the Well‐Being of Individuals with Down Syndrome and Dementia Improve When Using Life Story Books and Rummage Boxes? A Randomized Single Case Series Experiment

“…() reported that DCM has good internal consistency, test–retest reliability and concurrent validity, correlating well with measures of quality of life, while others have been critical of DCM, raising concerns about reliability and validity (Thornton et al . ; Cooke & Chaudhury ), and suggesting that DCM may be inferior to some existing validated measures of well‐being (Chenoweth & Jeon ). However, others have successfully used DCM to evaluate care and support practices within services for people with IDs (Persaud & Jaycock ; Jaycock & Persaud ; Jaycock et al .…”

The physical environment, activity and interaction in residential care facilities for older people: a comparative case study

“…The data regarding resident activities were collected using an adapted version of the DCM (33). The original DCM is widely used in dementia care (36)(37)(38). The adapted version emphasises activities can be used to observe people with or without dementia and has been validated against measures of well-being and quality of life among older people (39).…”

Monitoring and improving the quality of person-centred care in health and social settings using Dementia Care Mapping (DCM): Staff experiences of implementation barriers and supports

“…The need to establish IRR between DCM users has been discussed by a number of previous studies (10,11,20), however, this is the first study, to examine if those trained in DCM are conducting regular IRR maps, if so how frequently and if not what the barriers to this are. Encouragingly, of those who had mapped only 20% never carried out IRR checks with the biggest barrier to doing this being a lack of someone else to complete IRR with.…”

“…DCM guidance (2) recommends that mappers establish inter-rater reliability (IRR) (minimum 70% concordance across BCC and ME values) with any co-mapper ahead of use, and that every mapper conduct an IRR map at least once per year. Published literature highlights that while a number of research studies have examined IRR and demonstrated it can be established effectively between experienced mappers in research contexts (10,20), relatively little is really known about IRR between mappers in everyday practice or whether IRR checks are completed regularly (19). In one study, Thornton et al examined IRR in the context of everyday mapping.…”