The relationship of the clinician-rated Functional Status Interview with executive functioning

Self/informant-report and performance-based instruments are typically used to measure activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). Minimal attention has focused on clinician-rated measures. Executive functioning (EF) contributes significantly to functional independence, and the validity of functional status measures has been examined through its relationship to EF scores. The current study used a clinical sample of older U.S. Veterans who completed a neurocognitive evaluation (n = 266). The psychometric properties of a novel, clinician-rated Functional Status Interview (FSI) and its relationship to EF measures, including the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) and Trail Making Test (TMT-A and TMT-B), were explored. Two FSI factors (IADL and ADL) emerged with all items loading strongly onto the subscales as predicted. EF correlated strongly with IADL but had small to medium correlations with ADL. In regression models that controlled for sociodemographic variables, all EF measures uniquely contributed to the IADL model, but only FAB and TMT-A contributed to the model for ADL. Notably, results may have been limited by prominent floor effects on TMT-B. Overall, the FSI is a promising measure with demonstrated content validity. Thus, there is preliminary support for clinicians to incorporate multiple sources of information to rate functional status using the FSI.