Comparison of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living assessment by face-to-face or telephone interviews: a randomized, crossover study

Virginie Dauphinot,Pierre Krolak-Salmon,Claire Moutet,Sarah Achi,Anthony Bathsavanis,Nawèle Boublay

doi:10.1186/s13195-020-00590-w

Abstract

BackgroundThe functional autonomy assessment is essential to manage patients with a neurodegenerative disease, but its evaluation is not always possible during a consultation. To optimize ambulatory autonomy assessment, we compared the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) questionnaire collected by telephone and face-to-face interviews.MethodsA randomized, crossover study was carried out among patients attending a memory clinic (MC). The IADL questionnaire was collected for patients during telephone and face-to-face interviews between nurses and patients’ caregivers. The agreement between the two methods was measured using the proportion of participants giving the same response, Cohen’s kappa, intraclass correlation (ICC) coefficient, and Bland and Altman method. The associations between patients’ characteristics, events occurring between the two assessments, and agreement were assessed.ResultsAmong the 292 patients (means ± SD age 81.5 ± 7, MMSE 19.6 ± 6, 39.7% with major neurocognitive disorders) analyzed, the proportion of agreement between the two modes was 89.4% for the total IADL score. Weighted kappa coefficient was 0.66 and ICC score was 0.91 for total IADL score. The mean difference between the IADL score by telephone or face-to-face was 0.32. Overall, 96.9% of measures lay within the 95% limits of agreement. The occurrence of fall was less likely associated with the probability to lie within the 95% limits of agreement (OR = 0.07 [0.02–0.27]).ConclusionThe administration of IADL by telephone with the caregiver appears to be an acceptable method of assessment for MC patients compared to face-to-face interview. The events such as falls which could occur in a time close to the evaluation should be reported.Study registrationClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02654574. Retrospectively registered: 13 January 2016

Highlights

The functional autonomy assessment is essential to manage patients with a neurodegenerative disease, but its evaluation is not always possible during a consultation
There is no standard measurement of functional status, and information on the metric proprieties of the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) questionnaire is limited [2], it is commonly used in memory clinic (MC) during face-to-face interview [3]; it assesses patients’ ability to perform daily tasks considered as complex activities for which different cognitive processes are involved
The study was conducted in the same context of the MEMORA cohort that aims to study the relationship between patient characteristics and functional autonomy change over time among patients attending a MC [10]

Summary

Introduction

The functional autonomy assessment is essential to manage patients with a neurodegenerative disease, but its evaluation is not always possible during a consultation. The collection of data through other modes of administration, such as telephone interview, has been previously proposed to achieve these goals, and, while several studies have compared telephone and telehealth administration to face-to-face interviews for different cognitive questionnaires, none has studied the Lawton IADL questionnaire [5,6,7,8]. Such an evaluation is required as it is reported that the mode of administration could influence the quality data. We assessed whether patient characteristics may impact the degree of agreement

Methods

Results

Conclusion