The brief case for everyday problems: a proposal of two brief alternate forms of the Everyday Problems Test.

Abstract

Everyday Problems Test (EPT; Willis and Marsiske, Manual for the everyday problems test, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, 1993) is an 84-item performance-based measure of older adults' everyday cognitive competencies in seven everyday domains (e.g., finance, reading prescription). Its length makes it disadvantageous in the typical time-constrained testing context. Due to the potential practice effects, it is also impractical for longitudinal and intervention studies which require repetitive testing. We have addressed these issues by adapting two brief forms of EPT, with 14 items each. The psychometric evaluation of these two versions was conducted on a sample of 157 cognitively healthy older adults. Both brief forms demonstrated good internal consistency, high inter-correlation, and have shown satisfactory concurrent criterion-related validity based on their correlations with socio-demographic and cognitive variables. Results indicate that the two proposed brief forms can be a valuable tool in assessing the everyday cognitive competence of healthy older adults either as a one-time screening instrument or as a pretest-posttest difference indicator of the intervention efficacy.