Acceptance of and attitudes towards Alzheimer's disease screening in elderly German adults

Background: Considering the discussion on implementing routine dementia screening in Germany, the objective of the current study was to validate the German version of the Perceptions Regarding Investigational Screening for Memory in Primary Care (PRISM-PC) questionnaire and to determine the acceptance of Alzheimer's disease screening in elderly German adults. Methods: The German version of the PRISM-PC was administered to a subsample of participants who attended the Berlin Aging Study II (n = 506). The questionnaire was validated by exploratory as well as confirmatory factor analysis. Results: Regarding acceptance of Alzheimer's disease screening (Section B) a single factor structure fitted best. In terms of attitudes regarding Alzheimer's disease (Section D), a hierarchical factor structure was modeled with the higher-order factor "Harms" covering the domains "Family Burden," "Dependence," "Emotional Suffering," "Stigma," and "Medical Care" on the one hand and the domain "Future Planning" on the other hand. Internal consistency of the different scales reached from alpha = 0.67 to alpha = 0.94. Overall, 71.2% of the participants indicated that they wanted to be screened for Alzheimer's disease on a regular basis. Conclusions: This study suggests that acceptance can reliably be assessed with the section "Acceptance of Alzheimer's disease screenings" of the German PRISM-PC questionnaire. Furthermore, the majority of elderly German adults would like to be screened for Alzheimer's disease regularly, which might be an effective starting point in order to implement routine dementia screenings. As the sample is a convenience sample of (relatively) healthy older adults, generalizability of these results is limited.