[Dementia Care Mapping-Japanese version(DCM-J) as a research evaluation method for measuring quality of life among elderly patients with dementia: reliability and validity of Well-being and Ill-being value].
OBJECTIVE
Dementia Care Mapping is a behavior evaluation tool that can be used to measure and improve the quality of life of elderly patients with dementia. However, the reliability and validity of the Dementia Care Mapping-Japanese version (DCM-J) has not yet been established. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to clarify the reliability and validity of the Well-being and Ill-being (WIB) value of the DCM-J as a method for evaluating quality of life.


METHODS
The study was conducted from April 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006. The participants included 130 elderly patients (men 31, women 99, average age 82.65+/-7.69 years) who were given a diagnosis of dementia. We established inter-rater reliability during a parallel observation method and also used test-retest for reliability. The correlation between the WIB value of the DCM-J and the Japanese Quality of Life Inventory for Elderly with Dementia (QOL-D) was used to establish criterion-related validity.


RESULTS
Forty-nine (37.7%) subjects were given a diagnosis of dementia of Alzheimer's type, 80 (61.5%) had vascular dementia and 1 (0.8%) had dementia with Lewy bodies. The results showed correlation between the WIB value and social withdrawal measured by the behavioral category code (BCC) on the DCM-J and the three subscales of QOL-D: "interacting with surroundings", "expressing self", and "experiencing minimum negative behaviors". There was good internal consistency among these items. The interclass correlation coefficient was 82.32 (+/-5.85) for the WIB value of the DCM-J. The correlation coefficient of the retest, administered one week later, was 0.836 (p=0.001). The WIB value was significantly correlated with three sub-scales of QOL-D, and the correlation coefficient was greater than 0.53.


CONCLUSIONS
We demonstrated that the WIB value of the DCM-J has good inter-rater reliability and test re-test reliability and criterion-related validity. In this study, the WIB value was shown to have similar reliability to the WIB value of the original DCM. Furthermore, our results suggest that the DCM-J could be useful for evaluating quality of life among elderly Japanese patients with dementia.
Suzuki
Mizue
M
School of Nursing, Mie Prefectural College of Nursing.
Mizuno
Yutaka
Y
Brooker
Dawn
D
Sumigaki
Chieko
C
Sakamoto
Ryoko
R
Uchida
Astuko
A
Greiner
Chieko
C
Ooshiro
Hajime
H
Kanamori
Masao
M
D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*