Reliability and Validity of Self-Reported Risk Factors for Stroke and Dementia

Stroke and dementia are leading causes of mortality and can be prevented through risk factor management. Risk factor assessment requires laboratory or physical measurements. We aimed to determine whether self-reported risk factors serve as reliable proxies and predict stroke- and dementia-related mortality.

We used cross-sectional data from the NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) from 1999 to 2018 linked to National Death Index records. We included participants with available data on self-reported and measured hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, kidney disease, hearing impairment and overweight. Reliability was assessed using F1 scores, and used survey-weighted Cox-proportional hazards models evaluated associations with stroke- or dementia-related mortality. Reliability of self-reported risk factors was highest in overweight (F1 score 0.81, sensitivity 76%, specificity 77%) and diabetes (F1 score 0.71, sensitivity 77%, specificity 97%) and lowest for kidney disease (F1 score 0.25, sensitivity 16%, specificity 98%). Self-reported hypertension (hazard ratio [HR], 1.49 [95% CI, 1.14-1.94]) and diabetes (HR, 1.58 [95% CI, 1.18-2.12]) were associated with stroke-related mortality, comparable to measured risk factors. For dementia-related mortality, only measured hearing impairment (all dementia cases had hearing impairment at baseline) and both self-reported (HR, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.37-0.68]) and measured overweight (HR, 0.70 [95% CI, 0.52-0.93]) were associated.

In conclusion, the reliability and validity of self-reported risk factors for stroke and dementia differ between risk factors. Although self-reported measures vary in their reliability, they perform equally as well as objective metrics for evaluating the risk of stroke- and dementia-related mortality.