[Usefulness and validity of the abbreviated Amsterdam Dementia Screening Test (ADS3) in nursing homes]

In this explorative study, 20 demented and 20 non-demented elderly adults were tested with the Amsterdam Dementia Screening test (ADS3) and the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R). Subjects were recruited from a nursing home. The ADS3 appeared to be a feasible instrument for the patient groups investigated here: 87.5% of the demented and non-demented patients were classified correctly. A combination of the ADS3 and the WMS-R led to a correct prediction of 97.5% of the individuals in the two groups investigated. Education appeared to have an effect on performance on the ADS3, whereas age and gender did not. As expected, a strong linear relationship between the ADS3 and the WMS-R was found. However, since data about reliability, validity and norms of the WMS-R are still under investigation, definite conclusions about the concurrent validity cannot be made yet.