A grid for a precise analysis of daily activities.
Assessment of daily living activities is essential in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Most current tools quantitatively assess overall ability but provide little qualitative information on individual difficulties. Only a few tools allow therapists to evaluate stereotyped activities and record different types of errors. We capitalised on the Kitchen Activity Assessment to design a widely applicable analysis grid that provides both qualitative and quantitative data on activity performance. A cooking activity was videotaped in 15 patients with dementia and assessed according to the different steps in the execution of the task. The evaluations obtained with our grid showed good correlations between raters, between versions of the grid and between sessions. Moreover, the degree of independence obtained with our analysis of the task correlated with the Kitchen Activity Assessment score and with a global score of cognitive functioning. We conclude that assessment of a daily living activity with this analysis grid is reproducible and relatively independent of the therapist, and thus provides quantitative and qualitative information useful for both evaluating and caring for demented patients.
Wojtasik
V
V
Memory Centre, Department of Neurology, University Hospital of Liege, Liege, Belgium.
Olivier
C
C
Lekeu
F
F
Quittre
A
A
Adam
S
S
Salmon
E
E
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009048:Motor Skills; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D015588:Observer Variation; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014741:Video Recording