Learning to Ask Older Adults Better Questions About Their Memory

A study published in The Gerontologist found the wording of questions that healthcare providers and researchers often use to screen for people who may be at risk for developing Alzheimer's and other aging-related problems can be confusing or trigger emotional responses, reports EurekAlert . In one example, when asked "Have you had problems with your memory recently?" one person may interpret "recently" as within the same week while another may interpret it as within the last month, or a third may be frightened by problems with their memory and disregard the question. The researchers enrolled 49 older adults in central Pennsylvania without dementia. Each participant was asked a variety of questions commonly used to screen for Alzheimer's. The researchers then asked follow-up questions about how and why they answered the way they did to help identify possible problems with the screening questions. The investigators found 13 different types of problems in the questions, with vagueness and the assumption that participants' behavior or experience is always consistent being the two biggest problems. Furthermore, some questions tended to provoke an emotional response. "If we really want to understand how people are experiencing early symptoms and what is influencing their reporting of symptoms, we need to get at more of that individual experience, and our questions that we currently use aren't capturing it," says Pennsylvania State University Professor Nikki Hill.