A community needs assessment: the care needs assessment pack for dementia (CarenapD)--its development, reliability...

To develop and evaluate a multidisciplinary needs assessment tool for people with dementia living in the community and their carers.

The measure was developed through applying a theory of need, generating content, consultation with potential users and refinement and evaluation. Validity was established incrementally through the development process.

The development and evaluation was conducted in a variety of settings, including multidisciplinary dementia community care teams, social work departments, day hospitals, and inpatient and residential care.

The evaluation included community patients with a formal diagnosis of dementia (N = 34) and consultation with a multidisciplinary group of potential users (N = 23). The development process included inpatients with a formal diagnosis of dementia (N = 157) and consultation with potential users (N = 170) from a range of professions including both health and social care.

Interrater reliability was assessed using the kappa statistic. Social validity was estimated using a measure developed for this purpose as part of the development process.

The evaluation of interrater reliability demonstrated that three-quarters of assessors agreed on at least 85% of items in the CarenapD. The kappa statistic demonstrated that agreement for 76.2% of items in the CarenapD was 'good' or better (ie kappa >0.75), for 12.4% of items it was 'fair' or 'moderate' (ie kappa 0.35-0.60) and for the remaining 12 (11.4%) items for which kappa could not be calculated there was low intra-item variance and high agreement (>90%). There was good evidence for social validity.

The CarenapD is a reliable and valid multidisciplinary assessment of need for people with dementia living in the community and their carers.