Measurement of Functional Activities in Older Adults in the Community

Abstract

Two measures of social function designed for community studies of normal aging and mild senile dementia were evaluated in 195 older adults who underwent neurological, cognitive, and affective assessment. An examining and a reviewing neurologist and a neurologically trained nurse independently rated each on a Scale of Functional Capacity. Interrater reliability was high (examining vs. reviewing neurologist, r = .97; examining neurologist vs. nurse, tau b = .802; p less than .001 for both comparisons). Estimates correlated well with an established measure of social function and with results of cognitive tests. Alternate informants evaluated participants on the Functional Activities Questionnaire and the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale. The Functional Activities Questionnaire was superior to the Instrumental Activities of Daily scores. Used alone as a diagnostic tool, the Functional Activities Questionnaire was more sensitive than distinguishing between normal and demented individuals.

Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers predict frontotemporal dementia trajectory

“…Patients were also assessed using the Functional Assessment Questionnaire (FAQ),18 the Clinician's Global Impression Scale (CGI),19 the Schwab and England Activities of Daily Living scale (SEADL),20 the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI),21 the Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE),22 the California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition‐Short Form (CVLT),23 digit span (backward and forward),24 a modified Trail‐making task,25 the Stroop color naming and inhibition tasks,26 phonemic fluency (D‐words/minute),25 semantic fluency (animals/minute),27 the 15‐item Boston Naming Test (BNT),28 the short version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test‐Revised (PPVT),29 the Pyramids and Palm Trees test of sematic access,30 and a copy of the Modified Rey Benson Figure 25…”

Synchronization during an internally directed cognitive state in healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment: a MEG study

“…All participants were rated with a variety of standardized diagnostic instruments that included the following: the Spanish version of the MMSE (Lobo et al 1979), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; Yesavage et al 1982), the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS; Reisberg et al 1982), the Hachinski Ischemic Score (HIS; Rosen et al 1980), the Functional Assessment Questionnaire (FAQ; Pfeffer et al 1982), the questionnaire for Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL; Lawton and Brody 1969), and the Functional Assessment Staging (FAST; Auer and Reisberg 1997).…”

Auditory brain-stem, middle- and long-latency evoked potentials in mild cognitive impairment

“…MCI subjects exhibited moderate to severe deficits in episodic memory, typically O1.5 SD below the mean of age-matched normative scores on episodic memory tests without notable impairments on other neuropsychological tests. MCI subjects were not impaired in activities of daily living as determined by the assessments of Bristol Activities of Daily Living Scale (Bucks et al, 1996), Functional Activities Questionnaire (Pfeffer et al, 1982), Blessed-Roth Dementia Scale (Blessed et al, 1968), and Dementia Rating Severity Scale (Clark and Ewbank, 1996). Eight MCI subjects were taking cholinesterase inhibitor, such as donepezil hydrochloride, at the time of evoked potential testing.…”