Behave-AD-FW Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale: studio di attendibilità della versione italiana della scala

Context: The new Behave-AD-FW is an instrument, appositively designed to access potentially remediable symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease patients, it also evaluates the outcome of pharmacological and non pharmacological treatments. It consists of 25 items grouped into 7 categories. Each symptom is scored on severity and on its frequency on four-point scales. The instrument is administered to a well informed caregiver and symptoms are referred to the previous two week. Its reliability, construct validity and criterion validity have already been demonstrated in its original version by Prof. B. Reisberg. Objective: Objective of the present study is to describe the Italian version of the scale and evaluate its reliability. Method: The scale has been administered to 40 caregiver of 40 patients who attended the Alzheimer Center. Different types of dementia were included in the sample of patients. Two clinicians separately and independently rates the responses on the scale in order to evaluate the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Results: ICCs for severity score in the categories had a range between 0.96 to 1.00; ICCs calculated on frequency had a range between 0.98 and 1.00; ICCs for total frequency-weighted score for the seven categories ranged from 0.94. to 0.99 (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Results indicates that Italian version of Behave-AD-FW is a reliable instrument.