Investigating the relevance of the advanced activities of daily living tool for the screening and diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment and dementia to the Sub-Saharan African migrant population in Belgium: A qualitative focus group study

Abstract

Introduction: Early diagnosis of dementia is partly based on the evaluation of the basic (b-), instrumental (i-) and advanced (a-) activities of daily living (ADL). Adapting the item content of assessment tools to maintain relevance, understanding, and equivalence of the items and scales across other groups is pertinent. However, there are limited assessment tools developed on or adapted for use on the growing older Sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrant population in Europe. Focusing on the item content, we evaluated the relevance of the advanced activities of daily living (a-ADL) tool to the older SSA migrant population in Belgium.

Method: Two focus group discussions were organized with participants from the SSA community in Gent, Belgium. Relevant, irrelevant, unclear, and new items were identified. The data was analyzed through the inductive method while consensus agreements were used to arrive at refined themes.

Results: Out of the 49 items on the tool, both groups unanimously agreed that 15 items were relevant and 23 irrelevant. Thirteen new items were identified, whereas 15 items were considered unclear.

Conclusion: Participants agreed the tool was relevant but should be adapted. Verification and validation of these results in a larger SSA older migrant population in Belgium is strongly recommended.

Keywords: Functional decline; culture sensitive; older migrants; relevance of items.