The NEO-FFI is a reliable measure of premorbid personality in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease

✍ Scribed by Nicola Archer; Richard G. Brown; Harry Boothby; Catherine Foy; Helen Nicholas; Simon Lovestone

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/gps.1499

✦ Synopsis

Aim:

To assess the inter-informant reliability, intra-informant reliability and internal consistency of the neo-ffi as a measure of premorbid personality in patients with alzheimer's disease (ad).

Subjects:

One hundred and five persons with nincds-adrda probable ad for the assessment of inter-informant reliability and internal consistency, and 30 for the assessment of intra-informant reliability.

Methods:

Premorbid personality was rated retrospectively by close relatives remembering the patient as he/she had been when aged in his/her forties. one hundred and five ad patients were rated by two separate informants. thirty ad patients were rated by the same informant on separate occasions one year apart.

Results:

Inter-informant reliability for the five domain scores of the neo-ffi was shown to range from fair to good when measured using the single measure intraclass correlation co-efficient (icc) (0.52-0.64), and to range from good to excellent when measured using the average icc (0.68-0.78). intra-informant reliability for four out of the five domains was shown to be excellent when measured using the single icc (0.81-0.92), and good for the remaining domain (0.72). intra-informant reliability was found to be excellent for all five domains when measured using the average icc (0.84-0.96). internal consistency of the five domains was good.

Conclusions:

The neo-ffi can be used reliably to measure premorbid personality in patients with probable ad. it may be useful to maximise reliability by using a mean domain score based on questionnaires completed by two or more informants who knew the patient well earlier in life.