Informant report of practical judgment ability in a clinical sample of older adults with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of capturing problems with judgment and decision-making during neuropsychological evaluations of older adults, there are a limited number of validated measures and no informant rating scales. We developed an informant measure that captures compromised judgment related to safety, medical, financial, and social-ethical issues After item refinement and piloting in a memory disorders clinic, we utilized the Test of Practical Judgment-Informant (TOP-J-Informant) at two clinics in the Midwestern U.S., including 189 patient/informant dyads (mean age = 79.0, median years of education = 13, % female = 67.7) with various preclinical and clinical dementia conditions. We found psychometric support, including evidence for convergent, divergent, and criterion-related validity, and internal consistency. Importantly, we were able to discriminate between diagnostic groups in the expected direction. The TOP-J-Informant is brief (<5 minutes), easy to administer, and can reveal areas of concern related to poor judgment when administered in the context of a neuropsychological evaluation or clinic visit.

KEYWORDS:

• Judgment
• older adults
• informant report
• instrument validation
• Alzheimer’s disease
• mild cognitive impairment
• questionnaire
• neuropsychological assessment
• Test of Practical Judgment

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was declared.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The TOP-J-Informant is available upon request from authors L. Rabin: [email protected]) or C. Quinn [email protected]).

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health NIA F31 AG063472, NIA R15 AG066039, and CUNY Doctoral Student Research Grant.