Functional Disability in Early Alzheimer’s Disease – A Validation Study of the Italian Version of the Disability Assessment for Dementia Scale

Abstract

Aim: To determine the applicability and psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Disability Assessment of Dementia scale (DAD-I) in a community-residing population with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: The DAD-I was administered to the primary caregivers of 159 patients (mean age ± SD 77.1 ± 5.2) with mild AD (mean Mini Mental State Examination, MMSE, ± SD 23.1 ± 2.2). Results: The DAD-I showed excellent internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.92) and good construct validity. The DAD-I score was not significantly associated with gender, education and presumed duration of the illness, and had a low negative correlation with age. The DAD-I score correlated moderately with the traditional Instrumental Activities of Daily Living and Activities of Daily Living scales, respectively, with r = 0.53 and r = 0.54 (p < 0.0001). Relatively low, but statistically significant correlations (r ranging between 0.21 and 0.31) with the MMSE were also found. Conclusion: The DAD-I was found to be a reliable and valid instrument to assess functional disability in community-dwelling Italian subjects with early-stage AD.

Validity and Reliability of the Persian Version of the Disability Assessment for Dementia Scale

“…The results of this study are similar to other studies but this attempt included patients with a wide range of disease severity (27,29,31,32,34) …”

“…Also, the highest Cronbach's alpha coefficient belonged to the Italian version of the scale, which is equal to 0.92 (31). In the original study carried out by the developer of the scale, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient had been obtained as 0.96 (27).…”

“…The disability assessment for dementia scale has so far been translated into several languages. One of the features that the original version and the validated and reliable versions in other languages have proven is that the scale has no biases towards gender, education and age (29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). Due to the advantages listed and lack of validated and reliable versions in Persian language in terms of everyday living activities, the presence of a Persian scale that can assess both scopes of ADL and IADL will be helpful in the treatment and rehabilitation of patients with Alzheimer's.…”

“…With the exception of the item food preparation, based on the analysis carried out, like previous studies, the score obtained from DAD has no significant relationship with gender, education, and age. Moreover, one of the criteria of an ideal scale is the loss of orientation with respect to gender (27,29,(31)(32)(33)(34) …”

Prevalence of Sleep Disturbances in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementing Disorders: A Multicenter Italian Clinical Cross-Sectional Study on 431 Patients

“…In particular, for what concerns the variables considered in this study, we estimated the severity of dementia with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) [25], and the severity of depressive symptoms with the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BD-III) [26]. Functional impairment was evaluated with the Physical Self-Maintenance Scale (PSMS) [27] and in a selected group of patients, the Italian version of the Disability Assessment for Dementia scale has been used [28]. …”