The Relevance of Sociodemographic and Health Variables on MMSE Normative Data

The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) is the most broadly used cognitive screening instrument in clinical and research contexts. The MMSE was administered to a community-based sample of cognitively healthy adults (n = 850), stratified according to several sociodemographic variables, with a distribution similar to that observed in the Portuguese population. This study aimed to analyze the influence of sociodemographic (age, gender, education level, marital and employment status, geographic region, geographic localization, and residence area) and health variables (subjective memory complaints of the participant and evaluated by the informant, depressive symptoms, and family history of dementia) on the participants' performance on the MMSE and to establish normative data for the Portuguese population. Education level and age significantly contributed to the prediction of the MMSE scores and explained 26% of its variance. Regarding health variables, only the subjective memory complaints of the participant showed a small contribution (4%) to the variance of the MMSE scores. According to these results, age and education were considered in the development of the normative data of the MMSE for the Portuguese population.