Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire: a comparison of young and older adults

ABSTRACT

The Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire (MMQ; Troyer & Rich, [2002]. Psychometric properties of a new metamemory questionnaire for older adults. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 57(1), P19–P27) is a widely used measure of subjective memory consisting of three scales: Satisfaction, Ability, and Strategies. Although subjective memory complaints are prevalent across different age groups, the factor structure and psychometric properties of the MMQ have yet to be examined in young adults. Here, we independently replicated the original MMQ factor structure in N = 408 young adults (YA) recruited from undergraduate courses and N = 327 older adults (OA) and, for the first time, assessed the age-invariance of the scale using measurement invariance testing. YAs made significantly higher ratings than OAs on MMQ-Satisfaction and MMQ-Strategies, indicating greater satisfaction with their memory and greater use of strategies, but the groups were similar on MMQ-Ability. The original MMQ factor structure was replicated in OAs but not in YAs, and age invariance was not supported. Future studies seeking to compare young and older adults could therefore consider either requesting modification of the MMQ for use with young adults or using a different scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective memory
• aging
• young adults
• confirmatory factor analysis
• age invariance

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC 2019) awarded to Patrick Davidson.

CRediT author statement

A.J.: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Visualisation, Writing (Original draft, Review & editing), Project administration. A.W.C: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Validation, Writing (Review & editing). R.H.: Data curation, Writing (Review & editing). H.D.: Investigation, Writing (Review & editing). S.R.: Investigation, Writing (Review & editing). M.È.B.G.: Investigation, Writing (Review & editing). V.S.: Investigation, Writing (Review & editing). P.S.R.D.: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Investigation, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing (Review & editing).

Data availability statement

All study data and materials will be made available upon request via email using a secure link.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [grant number 2019].