Neuropsychological tests in the elderly: methods and sample characteristics of a GRECC study

This report describes the methods and sample characteristics of a neuropsychological study of the elderly conducted by the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The goal of the study was to provide normative data, internal consistency and 1-year reliability estimates, and validated methods of estimating expected performance level. Thirty-one cognitive measures and a demographic questionnaire were administered to an age-, education-, and gender-stratified sample ( N = 349) and a validation sample (N = 70). After 1 year, 104 of the participants were retested. Relative to published, nationally based normative data, the stratified sample showed performance levels that ranged from average to high average across the five tests examined.