[The Mini Mental Status Examination. Normative data and a comparison of a 12-item and 20-item version in a sample...

The results of a study on the comparison of the original 20-item Mini-Mental State Examination with a shortened 12-item version as a brief screening test for cognitive impairments in a community based older sample are presented. The scores on the MMSE decrease with higher ages and lower levels of education. The results show that a threshold value of 24 on the MMSE-20 (Cohen's kappa .70), which supports previous Norwegian findings. In case of the identification of older people with severe cognitive impairments -threshold value 17 or 18 on the MMSE-20-, we found a corresponding threshold on the MMSE-12 of 7 (Cohen's kappa .87 and .91, respectively). Although the Norwegian researchers made no direct comparison between the MMSE-20 and MMSE-12 for these lower thresholds, a threshold 7 on the MMSE-12 resulted in a lower level of misclassifications of cognitively impaired patients by a psychogeriatrician compared to a threshold of 18 on the MMSE-20. It may be concluded that the MMSE-12, which is simpler to use and takes less time, has the same diagnostic properties as a screening tool for mild and severe cognitive impairments.