Caregiver-Administered Neuropsychiatric Inventory (CGA-NPI)

J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol. 2004 Mar;17(1):32-5. doi: 10.1177/089198873258818.

Abstract

The Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) is used to assess neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia patients. To reduce clinicians' time taken to administer the NPI, the authors studied a caregiver-administered NPI (CGA-NPI), in which caregivers completed the written form of the NPI worksheet. After a brief presupervision session, the caregivers of 61 dementia patients completed the CGA-NPI by reading through the worksheet. This was followed by a postsupervision session to check if the caregivers had completed the form appropriately. The correlation between the prevalence rates of each neuropsychiatric symptom obtained by the CGA-NPI and those obtained by the NPI was fair to good (kappa = 0.57-0.90) in all domains. All frequency, severity, and caregivers' distress scores of the CGA-NPI correlated significantly with those of the NPI (r> 0.6, P<.001). Total CGA-NPI scores also correlated highly with total NPI scores (r= 0.86, P<.001). These results suggest that the CGA-NPI can substitute for the NPI, saving administration time.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Alzheimer Disease / classification
  • Alzheimer Disease / diagnosis*
  • Alzheimer Disease / psychology
  • Caregivers* / education
  • Caregivers* / psychology
  • Dementia, Vascular / classification
  • Dementia, Vascular / diagnosis*
  • Dementia, Vascular / psychology
  • Female
  • Geriatric Assessment* / statistics & numerical data
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Status Schedule / statistics & numerical data
  • Middle Aged
  • Neuropsychological Tests* / statistics & numerical data
  • Observer Variation
  • Psychometrics / statistics & numerical data
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Statistics as Topic