Abstract

CANTOR NIETO, Martha Isabel  and  AVENDANO PRIETO, Bertha Lucía. PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF A SCREENING TEST FOR DEMENTIA PESOTEST IN CLINICAL AND NON-CLINICAL SAMPLES OF ELDERLY PEOPLE. Act.Colom.Psicol. [online]. 2016, vol.19, n.2, pp.41-52. ISSN 0123-9155.  https://doi.org/10.14718/ACP.2016.19.2.3.

The aim of this instrumental study was to establish the psychometric properties of the screening test for dementia Pesotest in clinical and non-clinical samples of elderly people. The participants of this study were 213 elderly people over 65 years old. The instruments used were the Pesotest, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Sociodemographic Survey and the Geriatric Depression Scale Yesavage (GDS). A Cronbach's alpha of 0.86 for internal consistency of the Pesotest was found. The MMSE was used to establish convergent validity, finding a significant correlation of 0.596. Statistically significant differences were also found between the clinical and nonclinical samples. The factor analysis yielded four factors and using the ROC curve it was found that the sensitivity, or the proportion of people diagnosed with dementia, was 0.83; and the specificity, or the proportion of healthy people that were diagnosed with dementia by the test, was 0.78, with a cut-off point of 18. The analysis with the Rasch Model showed that only one item was not fit and that the most difficult item was the one which assessed calculation and memory, whose alteration indicates an evolution towards dementia. Based on the favorable results of the psychometric analysis, suitable internal consistency, convergent and construct validity and reliability, the use of the Pesotest in primary care services is recommended.

Keywords : Dementia; test validity; statistical validity; test reliability.

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