ASSESSMENT OF ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING IN DEMENTIA - DEVELOPMENT OFTHE BRISTOL ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING SCALE

A new assessment of Activities of Daily Living has been developed spec ifically for use with people with dementia. The assessment is a carer rated instrument consisting of 20 daily-living abilities. The scale ha s 'face validity', assessing items rated as important by and using lev els of ability generated by carers. It has 'construct' validity as dem onstrated by principal components analysis. It has 'concurrent validit y in that it correlates well with observed task performance. It has go od 'test-retest' reliability as measured by Cohen's Kappa and it corre lates well with the Mini-Mental State Examination. Carers report that it is easy to use and it is relatively short. The authors believe the scale will be useful when assessing demented patients in the community or as part of clinical research trials.