BioPsychoSocial
Assessment Tools for the Elderly - Assessment Summary Sheet
Test:
Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly
Year: 1989
Domain:
Psychological
Assessment
Tool Category: Dementia/Alzheimer's
Variations/Translations:
There is an abbreviated short version of this test containing
16 items as opposed to 26. Translations include Italian and
Spanish, including an abbreviated version. There is also a Dutch,
Canadian French, Chinese, and Thai version.
Setting:
Clinical
Method of
Delivery: Self-administered questionnaire
Description:
This test originated as an interview where the informant was
asked to rate the subject’s improvement or decline in 26
aspects of memory and intelligence over a ten year period. This
questionnaire was derived from that interview schedule. This
self-administered questionnaire containing 26 items covers changes
in learning, recall abilities, recognition, comprehension, and
other aspects of intelligence.
Scoring/Interpretation:
Each item is rated on a one to five scale. One represents
considerable improvement, 3 indicates no change, and five
represents considerable deterioration. An overall change score is
calculated by averaging the scores on each item, so that the
overall score can be interpreted on the same scale as each item.
Scores below three indicate improvement and three indicates no
change. Scores from 3.01 to 3.5 indicate slight decline; 3.51 to 4
indicate moderate decline; and 4.01 and higher indicate severe
decline. Because this test is used as a screening test for
dementia, different studies have proposed different
cutting-points. For patients without dementia, scores higher than
3.3 predicted the subsequent development of dementia.
Time to
Administer: N/A
Availability:
Available in source article (Jorm & Jacomb, 1989) and in
McDowell (2006).
Software:
N/A
Website:
N/A
Quantitative/Qualitative:
Quantitative
Validity
(Quantitative): Factorial validity: Jorm & Jacomb reported
a factor analysis where all items loaded highly on the first
factor, ranging from 0.47 to 0.81 in different samples. Criterion
validity: every item distinguishes significantly and this test
correctly identifies 92.7% of those with dementia, with a
specificity of 88%. Concurrent validity: When compared to the
MMSE, the highest correlations include -0.74, -0.75, -0.78 and
lower values include -0.44, and -0.41.
Reliability
(Quantitative): All items have high item-total correlations.
In a sample of Alzheimer’s patient’s chronbach’s
alpha was 0.93. Values of 0.95 have been reported for a general
population sample (N=613). In a one year follow up of 260 people
with dementia, the IQCODE showed a significant decline in scores,
giving a retest correlation of 0.75.
References:
McDowell, I.
(2006). Measuring Health: A guide to rating scales and
questionnaires 3rd Ed. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Jorm, A.F.,
Jacomb, P.A. (1989). The informant questionnaire on cognitive
decline in the elderly (IQCODE): socio-demographic correlates,
reliability, validity and some norms. Psychological Medicine,
19, 1015-1022.
Comments:
N/A
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