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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Interpretative guidelines for neuropsychiatric measures with dichotomously scored items | | Author(s) | John L Woodard, Bradley N Axelrod |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 14, no 5, May 1999 |
| Pages | pp 385-388 |
| Keywords | Assessment procedures for mental patients ; Dementia ; Depression ; Symptoms ; Standards of provision. |
| Annotation | Neuropsychiatric measures consisting of dichotomously scored items are commonly used in clinical assessment. After summing these items, clinical guidelines frequently recommend cut-off scores to determine the presence or degree of a particular attribute, such as depression. However, blind application of such cut-offs neglects whether the total score is significantly different from chance. The confounding problem is illustrated using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), and recommendations for interpreting the degree to which a GDS score significantly exceeds chance are presented. Specifically, GDS scores between 11 and 20 inclusive, were found not to differ significantly from chance (p>0.05), assuming a random response pattern. The importance of supportive clinical evidence of depressive symptomatology is increased for scores in this range. These guidelines would be helpful in using such measures with patients who may vary with respect to response accuracy, and in assessing possible incomplete effort of random responding. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990825263 A |
| Classmark | DA:4C: EA: ENR: CT: 583 |
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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