Measuring attitudes, motivations and barriers to presymptomatic dementia testing

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AbstractBackgroundThe increasing biomarkers testing and new methods of presymptomatic screening for dementia have risen questions like: Should people get tested? Would they want to know whether they will get this fatal, untreatable disease? This has picked the demand for a well‐structured counseling program for dementia screening. In this direction, it is important to meet the needs of the target group; however, not much is known about people with a family history of dementia attitudes about testing, the motivations and barriers, and the expectations relevant to future counseling programs about testing for dementiaMethodThis study was comprised of a validation study of a new psychometric tool and a cross‐sectional survey to assess the attitudes, buries and motivations to dementia testing. The content of the questionnaire was based on (1) a literature review, (2) the Perceptions Regarding Investigational Screening for Memory in Primary Care (PRISM‐PC) Questionnaire (M. Boustani et al., 2008), (3) a board of Clinical expert opinions. Two hundred eight (208) people enrolled in this cross sectional study. Participants came from Greece, ages ranged from 18‐70 (M = 35.5, SD = 5.7). and the majority of the sample was female (93.3%). Psychometric properties were assessed through construct validity (principal component analysis) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha).ResultExploratory factor analyses revealed the presence of four factors. The first factor labelled as “Perceived harms of testing”, the second “Acceptance of testing”, the third “Perceived benefits of testing”) and the fourth factor “Need of knowledge”. The reliability of each factor separately was satisfactory to very satisfactory (.70‐.87). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for all the final 25 items of the initial questionnaire was good (Cronbach’s α = 0.82), suggesting very satisfactory internal consistency.ConclusionThis is the first study that created a questionnaire for measuring the attitudes of Greek people towards dementia and genetic screening. Capturing data via this questionnaire might help clinicians, policymakers, and health services researchers in dementia understand better peoples’ perspectives related to the pros and cons of dementia screening and develop effective counseling programs and prevention strategies.