Normative Scores for Malayalam Cognitive Screening Test Battery among Older Adults in Kerala, India

Many neuropsychological tests are primarily developed in high-income countries, and normative data are not readily available for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We need culturally appropriate cognitive screening tests for India.

Hence, we decided to translate the Hindi cognitive screening test battery (HCSTB) tool to Malayalam and establish the age and education-stratified norms for a Malayalam cognitive screening test battery (MCSTB).

HCSTB was translated to Malayalam, back-translated by bilinguals conversant in Malayalam and English, and pretested on 30 older normal adults. Using a multistage sampling technique, we conducted a descriptive cross-sectional survey in the Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala, India. We approached older adults aged ≥60 years for informed and written consent. We excluded subjects with depression, functional impairment, cognitive impairment, history of stroke, psychosis, and visual/hearing loss that impaired cognitive assessment.

The normative data were derived from 441 older adults: 226 (51%) from rural areas and 215 (49%) from urban areas. Age and education affected the cognitive scores. The time to administer MCSTB among normal adults was approximately 17 minutes.

The derived normative data showed lower values than the published literature. A limitation of our study was the small number of older people with ≥12 years of education and the lack of neuroimaging of the subjects.