Sex-based dyad differences on informant reports of participants’ daily functioning

Abstract

Functional assessment in neurocognitive evaluation is often provided via informant reports. These subjective reports can vary based on the characteristics of informants and their relationships with participants, such as informant sex. However, whether informant sex intersects with participant sex to impact subjective ratings of participants’ daily functioning, and whether such effects mirror observed patterns in neuropsychological performance, has not been adequately examined with ethnoracially diverse samples. We examined differences among participant-informant sex-based dyads on subjective informant reports of participants’ daily functioning (assessed via the Functional Activities Questionnaire [FAQ]), and whether any observed differences on reported functioning corresponded to differences in objective participant performance on neuropsychological performance, among middle-aged and older Hispanic/Latino (n = 543), non-Hispanic Black (NHB; n = 1030), and non-Hispanic White (NHW; n = 5356) adults in the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center cohort (n = 6929). Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) tests revealed significant dyad differences on FAQ scores in the NHB (p<.001) and NHW subsamples (p<.05), but not in the Hispanic/Latino subsample (p>.05). For the Hispanic/Latino and NHB subsamples, ANCOVA tests revealed no significant effects of dyad on neuropsychological performance (ps>.01), whereas for the NHW subsample, ANCOVA tests revealed significant dyad differences on performance in multiple cognitive domains (ps<.01). Nevertheless, the pattern of dyad differences on neuropsychological performance did not mirror the pattern of observed differences on FAQ scores in the NHW subsample. Findings and their implications, including potential contributions of other informant characteristics on observed dyad differences on reported functioning, are discussed.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• daily functioning
• dementia
• functional activities questionnaire

Acknowledgements

We thank all NACC participants for their contributions to this work.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The NACC database is funded by NIA/NIH Grant U24 AG072122. NACC data are contributed by the NIA-funded ADRCs: P30 AG062429 (PI James Brewer, MD, PhD), P30 AG066468 (PI Oscar Lopez, MD), P30 AG062421 (PI Bradley Hyman, MD, PhD), P30 AG066509 (PI Thomas Grabowski, MD), P30 AG066514 (PI Mary Sano, PhD), P30 AG066530 (PI Helena Chui, MD), P30 AG066507 (PI Marilyn Albert, PhD), P30 AG066444 (PI John Morris, MD), P30 AG066518 (PI Jeffrey Kaye, MD), P30 AG066512 (PI Thomas Wisniewski, MD), P30 AG066462 (PI Scott Small, MD), P30 AG072979 (PI David Wolk, MD), P30 AG072972 (PI Charles DeCarli, MD), P30 AG072976 (PI Andrew Saykin, PsyD), P30 AG072975 (PI David Bennett, MD), P30 AG072978 (PI Neil Kowall, MD), P30 AG072977 (PI Robert Vassar, PhD), P30 AG066519 (PI Frank LaFerla, PhD), P30 AG062677 (PI Ronald Petersen, MD, PhD), P30 AG079280 (PI Eric Reiman, MD), P30 AG062422 (PI Gil Rabinovici, MD), P30 AG066511 (PI Allan Levey, MD, PhD), P30 AG072946 (PI Linda Van Eldik, PhD), P30 AG062715 (PI Sanjay Asthana, MD, FRCP), P30 AG072973 (PI Russell Swerdlow, MD), P30 AG066506 (PI Todd Golde, MD, PhD), P30 AG066508 (PI Stephen Strittmatter, MD, PhD), P30 AG066515 (PI Victor Henderson, MD, MS), P30 AG072947 (PI Suzanne Craft, PhD), P30 AG072931 (PI Henry Paulson, MD, PhD), P30 AG066546 (PI Sudha Seshadri, MD), P20 AG068024 (PI Erik Roberson, MD, PhD), P20 AG068053 (PI Justin Miller, PhD), P20 AG068077 (PI Gary Rosenberg, MD), P20 AG068082 (PI Angela Jefferson, PhD), P30 AG072958 (PI Heather Whitson, MD), P30 AG072959 (PI James Leverenz, MD).