A Multicentre Italian Validation Study in Aging Adults with Down Syndrome and Other Forms of Intellectual Disabilities: Dementia Screening Questionnaire for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Title:A Multicentre Italian Validation Study in Aging Adults with Down Syndrome and Other Forms of Intellectual Disabilities: Dementia Screening Questionnaire for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Volume: 14 Issue: 7

Author(s): Tiziano Gomiero*, Marco Bertelli, Shoumitro Deb, Elisabeth Weger, Annachiara Marangoni, Elisa De Bastiani, Ulrico Mantesso and Luc Pieter De Vreese

Affiliation:

• DAD© Project Group, ANFFAS TRENTINO ONLUS, Via Unterveger, 6/A, 38121 - Trento,Italy

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease (AD), dementia, intellectual disability, psychometric properties, screening test, validation.

Abstract: Background: The USA National Task Group (NTG) guidelines advocate the use of an adapted version of Dementia Screening Questionnaire for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (DSQIID) for dementia screening of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) and with other forms of ID (non-DS).

Objective: In order to meet these guidelines, this study verifies the psychometric properties of an Italian version of the original DSQIID in a population composed of adults aged 40 years and over with DS and non-DS ID.

Methods: Internal consistency, inter-rater and intra-rater reliabilities, structural validity, convergent validity and known group differences of DSQIID-I were assessed with 200 individuals with ID (mean of 55.2 years; range: 40-80 years) recruited from 15 different centers in Italy. Diagnosis of dementia was done according to IASSID diagnostic criteria and its degree of clinical certainty was defined according to Silverman et al.’s classification (2004).

Results: Cronbach’s alpha for the DSQIID-I was 0.94. The ICCs for inter-rater and test-retest reliability were both 0.89. A Principal Component analysis revealed three domains, namely memory and confusion- related items, motor and functional disabilities, depression and apathy, which explained almost 40% of the overall variance. The total DSQIID-I score correlated significantly with DMR and differed significantly among those individuals (n = 34) with cognitive decline from those without (n = 166). Age, gender and severity of ID were unrelated to the DSQIID-I.

Conclusion: The present study confirms the cross-cultural value of DSQIID which was proved to be a psychometrically valid and user-friendly observer-rated scale for dementia screening in adults with both DS and non-DS ID.

Cite this article as:

Gomiero Tiziano*, Bertelli Marco, Deb Shoumitro, Weger Elisabeth, Marangoni Annachiara, De Bastiani Elisa, Mantesso Ulrico and De Vreese Pieter Luc, A Multicentre Italian Validation Study in Aging Adults with Down Syndrome and Other Forms of Intellectual Disabilities: Dementia Screening Questionnaire for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities, Current Alzheimer Research 2017; 14 (7) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1567205014666170117094757

DOI https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1567205014666170117094757	Print ISSN 1567-2050
Publisher Name Bentham Science Publisher	Online ISSN 1875-5828