title: Performance on a smell screening test (the MODSIT): a study of 510 predominantly illiterate Chinese subjects.
abstract: The 12-item Modular Smell Identification Test (MODSIT) was administered to 239 male and 271 female Chinese subjects whose age ranged from 50 to 92 years (68.3 +/- 10.9) and whose education ranged from 0 to 20 years (2.5 +/- 4.3). Every participant was examined by a physician and was found to be free of dementia, stroke, and Parkinson's disease. Different from the standard procedures, only one-third of each odor pad was used for each subject, the four odor choices were presented orally for the majority of subjects, and they were not forced to make a selection when they could not detect or identify the odor. The average level of performance was 46% correct. The score was negatively associated with age, positively associated with education and with performance on a dementia screening test, and corroborated with subjects' report of smell deterioration in recent years. Nonsmokers and women performed better than smokers and men. The 12-item MODSIT had an internal consistency reliability of 0.73 and a 7-month retest stability of 0.57 with different examiners. The MODSIT is satisfactory for group studies, even when administered with suboptimal procedures such as those used in the present study.
authors.affiliation: Neurological Institute, Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
authors.forename: H C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: K P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: K N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Fuh
authors.forename: E L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Teng
mesh_terms: D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D002681:China; D004493:Education; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009812:Odorants; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology*