The Validity and Reliability of the Turkish Version of the Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS) for Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment
Abstract
Background: With demographic aging, the frequency of cognitive and behavioral disorders gradually increases. Screening tests, which are simple to perform, help detect dementia for the clinician. The Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS) is a screening test developed in Australia, where people from many cultures and languages live together, and it is stated that it is not affected by language and education level. Our aim in this study is to create a wider field of use by evaluating the patients with mild cognitive impairment of this test, whose Turkish validity and reliability study has been done previously for Alzheimer disease patients.
Method: The study group was composed of a group with Alzheimer's disease (n = 87), with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (n = 95), and a non-dementia control group (n = 80) with similar age, education level, and gender distribution Mini-mental status exam (MMSE) and RUDAS were applied to the patients and the control group. Tests were re-administered seven days later for test-retest evaluation for reliability tests. The internal consistency coefficient was calculated. For validation, patient groups and control group were compared. For parallel test validity, MMSE and RUDAS scores were compared. For time validity, first day and seventh day scores were compared.
Results: The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the RUDAS scale is 0.8529. In our analysis, the scale was found to be highly reliable. In our study, the difference between the RUDAS scale mean scores of the groups was found to be statistically significant (p<0.001). In estimating the Alzheimer's Disease patient group, the AUC value under the curve of the RUDAS score was obtained as 0.998, and the mild cognitive impairment AUC value was obtained as 0.971, which was found to be significant. (p<0.001). The degree of the relationship between the RUDAS scale and the MMSE scale was found to be very strong and statistically significant in the positive direction. (r=0.938 p<0.001)
Conclusion: This study showed that the Turkish version of the RUDAS is a valid and reliable scale for the evaluation and follow-up of Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment in the Turkish population.
Keywords:
Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, RUDAS, neuropsychological tests, neurocognitive disordersDOI
https://doi.org/10.22270/jddt.v15i1.6940References
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