Nhp. Allen et al., MANCHESTER AND OXFORD UNIVERSITIES SCALE FOR THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF DEMENTIA (MOUSEPAD), British Journal of Psychiatry, 169(3), 1996, pp. 293-307
Background. There is increasing awareness of the importance of psychop
athological and behavioural changes in dementia and a need for an inst
rument to measure these features which achieves an appropriate comprom
ise between brevity and breadth. We describe a newly developed 59-item
instrument: the MOUSEPAD. Method. Reliability, sensitivity and validi
ty were examined with 30 carers, each of whom was interviewed four tim
es over six weeks. Results. For different symptom groups kappa ranged
from 0.43 to 0.93 for test-retest reliability, from 0.56 to 1.0 for in
ter-rater reliability, and from 0.43 to 0.67 for the validation study.
Conclusions. The scale may be useful as an outcome measure in drug tr
ials, for correlating psychopathological and behavioural changes with
post-mortem findings, and in epidemiological surveys.