Rationale Behind The IQCODE
Most screening tests for dementia involve a brief list of questions to directly assess cognitive functioning. Probably the best-known dementia screening test of this kind is the Mini-Mental State Examination. A disadvantage of such tests is that they are affected by the person’s level of education, familiarity with the dominant language and culture in their country, and level of intelligence before the onset of dementia.
Because of this, cognitive screening tests can falsely indicate dementia in people with lower education, culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and lower intelligence. Cognitive screening tests may also have the opposite problem, falsely indicating that a person does not have dementia, especially if that person had a higher level of education or intelligence originally. The IQCODE attempts to overcome this problem by assessing change from earlier in life, rather than the person’s current level of functioning. It does this by making use of the informant’s knowledge of both the person’s earlier and current cognitive functioning.
Read more about this topic: Informant Questionnaire On Cognitive Decline In The Elderly