Suitability of Neuropsychological Tests for Assessments of Dementia in Africa

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundNeuropsychological assessment is a centerpiece element for detecting, diagnosing, and following‐up the evolution of a dementia syndrome. It should be based on valid, reliable, standardized, and culturally suitable tests. However, the majority of the available tests were developed in western countries, and little is known about how these tests were translated and adapted in Africa in concordance with the international guidelines of psychological measurement. The aim of this review is to inspect closely the available neuropsychological tests used in Africa during the last three decades, examine their psychometric qualities, and analyze their cultural appropriateness to the local populations.MethodWe performed a systematic review on published articles dealing with the neuropsychological assessment of dementia in the 54 African countries during the latest 30 years on main scientific search databases (Web of Science, Academic Search Ultimate (Ebsco), ScienceDirect, Scopus, PubMed, APA PsycArticles, Embase, Cochran). The search keywords were: dement* and (neuropsych* or *cognit*) and (assessment or evaluation or test*) and country, without restrictions about the language of publication. Our approach is fourfold: i) papers' extraction, ii) tests identification, iii) concordance analysis, and iv) appropriateness evaluation.ResultWe identified a list of different tests used in each country and estimated the level of their concordance with the international guidelines of psychological measurement regarding the translation and adaptation procedures as well as the type of validity, reliability, and the availability of local standardized data. More than the two‐thirds of the identified tests did not respect the international guidelines of psychological measurement in developing, translating and adapting neuropsychological tests for the screening and assessment of dementia in Africa.ConclusionWe focused on the importance to fix measurement’s issues in the neuropsychological assessment of dementia in Africa. A suggested list of recommendations was provided to improve it especially that Africa is the second most populous continent after Asia and its elderly population is showing the most rapid increase in the world.