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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Caregivers' judgments of the functional abilities of the Alzheimer's disease patient
— a comparison of proxy reports and objective measures | | Author(s) | David A Loewenstein, Soledad Argüelles, Marina Bravo |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 56B, no 2, March 2001 |
| Pages | pp P78-P84 |
| Keywords | Informal care ; Attitude ; Dementia ; Self care capacity ; Evaluation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The assessment of functional capacity is essential for the diagnosis of dementia by DSM-IV criteria and has important implications for patient intervention and management. Although ratings of functional disability by family or other proxy informants are widely used by clinicians, there have been concerns and empirical evidence that potential reporter bias may result in either over- or under-estimation of specific functional deficits. The authors compared family members' judgments of functional abilities of 72 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) with actual objective functional performance on an array of real-world tasks using the Direct Assessment of Functional Status Scale (DAFS). Results indicate that caregivers were extremely accurate in predicting functional performance of AD patients who were not impaired during objective evaluation. In contrast, caregivers significantly over-estimated the ability of impaired AD patients to tell the time, identify currency, find change for a purchase, or use cutlery. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010418204 A |
| Classmark | P6: DP: EA: CA: 4C: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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