Measuring the interactions of people with dementia and their conversation partners: a preliminary adaption of the Kagan measures of support and participation in conversation

Abstract

Objective

While dementia can negatively affect communication, positive interactions can be facilitated by the conversation partners of people with dementia. There are few assessment tools designed to evaluate the support provided by the conversation partner and the resulting participation of the person with dementia. This study reports on an adaptation of the Measure of Support in Conversation (MSC) and Measure of Participation in Conversation (MPC) scales for use with people with dementia and their conversation partners (the MSC Dementia and MPC Dementia, respectively) and investigates the inter-and intra-rater reliability of these adapted measures.

Method

The MSC-D and MPC-D scales were adapted from the original MSC and MPC scales to reflect current knowledge of communication and interaction involving people with dementia. Audio recordings of a total of 25 casual conversations, lasting 5–10 min, between a person with dementia and familiar aged care staff were independently rated by two raters to investigate inter-rater reliability and by one rater on two separate occasions to investigate intra-rater reliability.

Results

ICC analyses on the MSC-D indicated good inter-rater reliability (ICC = 0.718–0.812) and intra-rater reliability (ICC = 0.628–0.760). The MPC-D had excellent inter-rater reliability (ICC = 0.904–0.945) and intra-rater reliability (ICC = 0.925–0.957). 93.6% of all ratings were within 0.5 of each other on a nine point scale from 0 to 4.

Conclusion

The results provide preliminary support for the use of these adapted scales. Further research is required to investigate the validity and reliability of these scales using video recordings and across a wider range of communication genres.

Keywords:

• Dementia
• interaction
• rating scales
• assessment
• conversation
• conversation partner

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Postdoctoral Fellowship funding from the Dementia Collaborative Research Centre:Carers and Consumers, Queensland University of Technology, as part of the Australian Government’s Dementia Initiative. The views expressed in this article are the views of its authors and not necessarily those of the Commonwealth of Australia. The authors acknowledge that data was collected by the University of Queensland as part of the Postdoctoral Fellowship and the materials were provided to Australian Catholic University for research use. The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge Aura Kagan of the Aphasia Institute, and Leanne Togher and colleagues for their permission to use and adapt the original and TBI-adapted scales, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported.

Notes

1 The term dementia is defined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11, World Health Organisation) as a chronic or progressive syndrome due to disease of the brain, which is characterized by reduced cognitive functions in the following: memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgment. It should be noted that the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association, 2013) has replaced the term dementia with the new name of neurocognitive disorder (NCD). In earlier versions of the DSM, the diagnosis of dementia relied heavily on the presence of memory impairment. In the DSM-5, the diagnosis of NCD focuses on a broader range of cognitive impairment, no longer just learning and memory. For the purposes of this paper, the authors use the term dementia to also refer to NCDs as indicated in the DSM-5.