A mobile interactive cognitive self-assessment scale for screening Alzheimer’s disease

Background: A feasible self-administered cognition scale with rigorous validation and high diagnostic accuracy is lacking for screening for cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods An interactive cognitive self-assessment scale (CogSAS) was designed through the Delphi process, and 518 participants were subjected to item optimization. The scale was validated in 358 cognitively unimpaired and 396 cognitively impaired participants for reliability, validity, and diagnostic accuracy. Specificity and sensitivity were tested for 38 participants with cognitive impairment and 45 participants with cognitive impairment due to AD. Results The interactive CogSAS relies on speech recognition to achieve elderly friendly results. The internal consistency was 0.81, and the test-retest reliability was 0.82. The construct validity was 0.74, and the criterion validity was 0.77. The sensitivity and specificity for clinically diagnosed participants were 0.90 and 0.67, respectively. For cognitive impairment due to AD, the sensitivity and specificity were 1.00 and 0.78, respectively. Conclusions The CogSAS has good reliability, validity, and feasibility. It also showed high sensitivity and specificity in identifying cognitive impairment due to AD.