IDENTIFYING RISK FOR FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT USING COGNITIVE MEASURES -AN APPLICATION OF CART MODELING

The relationship between cognitive test performance and functional sta tus was assessed in 289 persons with a cognitive impairment diagnosis and in 307 controls from the Alzheimer's Disease Registry at Mayo Clin ic. Classification and regression tree (CART) procedures were used to create decision rules (using cutoff Scores) to identify persons most a l risk for functional impairment. The results suggest that scores from the Dementia Rating Scale, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), tile Perceptual-Organizational factor of the Weschler Adult Intelligen ce Scale-Revised (WATS-R): and age and education may be used in combin ation to identify persons al risk for functional disability. Decision rules to predict performance in specific functional domains are also p resented, The researchers concluded that CART has several advantages r elative to traditional line ar methods in establishing cognitive-funct ional relationships.