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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Black/white differences in the relationship between MMSE scores and disability: the Women's Health and Aging Study | | Author(s) | Suzanne G Leveille, Jack M Guralnik, Luigi Ferrucci |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological sciences and social sciences, vol 53B, no 3, May 1998 |
| Pages | pp P201-P208 |
| Keywords | Physical disabilities ; Mobility ; Self care capacity ; Cognitive processes ; Evaluation ; Older women ; White people ; Black people ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Cognitive decline has been found to be associated with disability in older people, however, the relationship is not well understood. The aim of this study was to examine differences among black and white women in the relationship between physical functioning difficulties and variations in cognitive status, measured within the low to high normal range of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). A total of 3,585 women from the US Women's Health and Aging Study (WHAS), with MMSE scores of 18 and above from a population-based random sample of community-dwelling women aged 65 years and over living in East Baltimore, Maryland, participated. Findings showed that prevalence of any functional difficulty was 43.3% in white women and 48.5% in black women, who were 25% of the study sample. After adjusting for age and education, a significant trend for increasing functional difficulty with decreasing MMSE scores was found in white women but not black women. Since no explanation for these differences could be identified, the findings suggest that MMSE may not be a valid predictor of functional difficulty in black women who score 18 and above on the instrument. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980813417 A |
| Classmark | BN: C4: CA: DA: 4C: BD: TKA: TKE: 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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