Telephone adaptation of the Modified Mini-Mental State Exam (3MS). The Cache County Study.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the concurrent validity of a newly developed telephone adaptation of the Modified Mini-Mental State Exam.


BACKGROUND
Longitudinal studies of cognition may be advantaged by availability of assessment instruments that can be used over the telephone, as well as in person.


METHODS
Subjects were 263 noninstitutionalized elderly residents of a rural community in southern Idaho, aged 65 to 93, who had little or no cognitive difficulty. At an average interval of four weeks, we administered the Modified Mini-Mental State Exam (3MS) and the newly adapted Telephone Modified Mini-Mental State Exam (T3MS). Order of administration was randomly assigned.


RESULTS
Agreement between scores on the two instruments was good (r = 0.82, p < 0.001). When we applied various cutoff scores to the instruments, thereby generating assignments of individuals to "screen positive" and "screen negative" groups, the percent agreement in screening results ranged from 80% to 96% as we reduced the cutoff scores from 90 to 74 (100 points possible).


CONCLUSIONS
At least among subjects without major cognitive syndromes, the Telephone Modified Mini-Mental State Exam provides a reasonable substitute for the more costly in-person 3MS. The telephone instrument should now be tested over a broader range of cognitive abilities in order to assess its validity in more impaired subjects, e.g., by studying an institutionalized sample.
Norton
M C
MC
College of Family Life, Utah State University, Logan, USA.
Tschanz
J A
JA
Fan
X
X
Plassman
B L
BL
Welsh-Bohmer
K A
KA
West
N
N
Wyse
B W
BW
Breitner
J C
JC
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007061:Idaho; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D008609:Mental Status Schedule / Q000592:standards*; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012424:Rural Population; D013689:Telephone