Validity of the French Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) in healthy controls and in patients with no cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) is one of the most commonly used scales to assess both retrospective memory (RM) and prospective memory (PM) complaints. This study aimed to: 1/replicate the previous results concerning the PRMQ latent structure in a French version and 2/provide its psychometric properties in a normal and clinical population.

Method: This observational study included 488 participants divided into five subgroups. A sample of 168 healthy participants (no memory consultation sought), served as controls. Patients were recruited in a memory clinic: 98 “functional” patients (subjective memory complaints but no memory impairment), 83 amnestic-Mild Cognitive Impairment (a-MCI), 82 non-amnestic-MCI (na-MCI) and 57 Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients. Structure, validity, consistency, reliabilitiy and reproducibility of the PRMQ were calculated. Novelty, Area Under the Receiver-Operating Characteristics (AUROC) curve, was used to determine the optimal cut-off, to distinguish “functional” patients from control participants.

Results: The optimal fit model of the French PMRQ was not a tri but a bi-partite model, with a RM and a PM subscale. The convergent validity showed significant correlation with cognitive difficulties (r = .82 and .78, respectively), anxiety (r = .44 and .48, respectively) and depression (r = .23) scales. Cronbach’s alpha was good (α = .79 and .88), as well as the reproducibility (r = .71 and .80). The interaction [Subgroups of participants x PMRQ Subscales] was significant [F(4, 483) = 11.46; p < .001]. The power discrimination was adequate (AUROC = .71 and .74) for detecting “functional” patients compared with controls, in particular for the PM subscale (sensitivity 66.6%, specificity 77.4%).

Conclusions: The PMRQ, with minor changes, was validated in its French form with satisfactory psychometric qualities. This self-rating tool appears useful for identifying significant memory complaints in a normal population and may also be helpful in discriminating between functional/na-MCI and a-MCI/AD patients.

KEYWORDS:

• Prospective memory
• retrospective memory
• French validation
• questionnaire
• memory complaints

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Mary Harries for her assistance in English, to Jean-Dominique Mouchard and Pr. Marc Ychou for their trust. They also thank Drs. Pierre Senesse, Amélie Darlix, Vanessa Guillaumon, Jean-Pierre Bleuse and Pr. Grégory Ninot for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the SIRIC Montpellier Cancer (Grant INCa_Inserm_DGOS_12553), which was not involved in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. All authors critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the version for submission.