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Identifying cognitive impairment among older participants in a nationally representative internet panel.

OBJECTIVES
The Health and Retirement Study Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (HRS TICS) score and its associated Langa-Weir cutoffs are widely used as indicators of cognitive status for research purposes in population-based studies. The classification is based on in-person and phone interviews of older individuals. Our purpose was to develop a corresponding classification for web-based self-administered assessments.


METHOD
Participants were 925 members of a nationally representative internet panel, all aged 50 and older. We conducted (a) a phone interview comprised of cognitive items used to construct the HRS TICS score, and (b) a web counterpart with self-administered cognitive items, while also considering (c) other already administered web-based cognitive tests and instrumental activities of daily living survey questions, all from the same respondents.


RESULTS
The web-administered HRS TICS items have only modest correlations with the same phone items, although neither mode showed universally higher scores than the other. Using latent variable modeling, we created a probability of cognitive impairment score for the web-based battery that achieved good correspondence to the phone Langa-Weir classification.


DISCUSSION
The results permit analyses of predictors, correlates, and consequences of cognitive impairment in web surveys where relevant cognitive test and functional abilities items are available. We discuss challenges and caveats that may affect the findings.