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.

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