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Addition of a frequency-weighted score to the Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale: the BEHAVE-AD-FW: methodology and reliability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

I.M. Monteiro ,
I. Boksay ,
S.R. Auer ,
C. Torossian ,
S.H. Ferris  and
B. Reisberg
I.M. Monteiro*
Affiliation:
Aging and Dementia Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY10016, USA
I. Boksay
Affiliation:
Aging and Dementia Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY10016, USA
S.R. Auer
Affiliation:
Aging and Dementia Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY10016, USA
C. Torossian
Affiliation:
Aging and Dementia Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY10016, USA
S.H. Ferris
Affiliation:
Aging and Dementia Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY10016, USA
B. Reisberg
Affiliation:
Aging and Dementia Research Center, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY10016, USA
*
*Correspondence and reprints. E-mail address: isabel.monteiro@med.nyu.edu (I.M. Monteiro).
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Summary

The Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale (BEHAVE-AD) is a well-established instrument, designed to assess potentially remediable behavioral symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients as well as to evaluate treatment outcome. It consists of 25 symptoms grouped into seven categories. Each symptom is scored on the basis of severity on a four-point scale. A knowledgeable caregiver is queried and items are scored on the basis of symptoms noted in the preceding two weeks. Reliability, construct validity and criterion validity data for the BEHAVE-AD have previously been published. Because of the significance of psychopathology in dementia, it is necessary to optimally describe and define the nature, magnitude and prevalence of behavioral symptomalogy. Accordingly, a frequency component was added to each of the 25 items of the BEHAVE-AD scale. The objective of the present report is to describe this new Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Frequency-Weighted Severity Scale (BEHAVE-AD-FW) and to establish its inter-rater reliability. In this investigation the BEHAVE-AD-FW scale was administered to caregivers of 28 patients with either mildly impaired cognitive function or a dementia diagnosis. Two clinicians separately and independently rated the responses. Analyses determined that the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for the frequency component varied between 0.86 and 0.97 for each of the seven BEHAVE-AD categories (ps < 0.001). ICCs for the frequency-weighted scores (item severity score x item frequency score) ranged from 0.69 to 0.98 for the seven symptom categories (ps < 0.001). For the BEHAVE-AD-FW total scores, the ICC was 0.91 (P < 0.001). These results indicate that the frequency-weighted component is a reliable addition to the BEHAVE-AD scale.

Keywords

Alzheimer’s diseaseassessmentbehavioral scalesbehavioral symptomsdementiarating scales
Type
Original article
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 16 , Issue S1 , 2001 , pp. 5s - 24S
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Éditions scientifiques et médicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved

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