Development of the dementia community attitudes questionnaire

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Social Psychology
• Public Health

Background:

• Living with dementia is evolving, with a focus on autonomy, independence, and community involvement.
• New initiatives are needed to support quality of life and shift community attitudes towards dementia.
• Measuring the impact of these initiatives is crucial for policy development and further interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify or develop a questionnaire assessing community attitudes towards people with dementia.
• The questionnaire should reflect current goals of autonomy, independence, and community engagement.

Main Methods:

• A four-stage approach: scoping literature review, questionnaire development with expert and user input, piloting, and preliminary psychometric testing.
• Scoping review to find existing tools; development of a new questionnaire if none suitable were found.
• Piloting involved people with dementia and their families; psychometric testing included exploratory factor analysis.

Main Results:

• No suitable existing questionnaire was found.
• A ten-item Dementia Community Attitudes Questionnaire was developed and refined through expert review and piloting.
• Exploratory factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution (Engagement, Challenges, Decision-Making) with acceptable to good reliability (Cronbach's alpha: 0.855, 0.785, 0.709).

Conclusions:

• Effective support for people with dementia requires new initiatives and valid evaluation tools.
• The Dementia Community Attitudes Questionnaire, developed with diverse input, assesses attitudes reflecting independence and engagement.
• Further psychometric validation is recommended for its use in evaluating dementia support initiatives.