W. Freidl et al., SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC PREDICTORS AND CONCURRENT VALIDITY OF THE MINI-MENTAL-STATE-EXAMINATION AND THE MATTIS DEMENTIA RATING-SCALE, European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 246(6), 1996, pp. 317-319
The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Mattis Dementia Ratin
g Scale (MDRS) are among the most commonly used screening tests for de
mentia. The goals of our study were, firstly, to identify sociodemogra
phic factors which may explain the variance of test results in a commu
nity sample and, secondly, to investigate the interrelationship of the
se two dementia screening tests in order to evaluate the concurrent va
lidity. A total of 1947 subjects were investigated in the setting of t
he Austrian Stroke Prevention Study (ASPS). Our study confirms most pr
evious results demonstrating a relationship of higher dementia test sc
ores with both younger age and higher educational level. Interestingly
, the results we obtained suggest only a weak relationship and poor co
ncurrent validity of the two tests. The total scores of the two tests
show poor joint variance. This could lead to the conclusion that these
tests evaluate different cognitive domains.