A Study on Verification of Equivalence and Effectiveness of Non-Pharmacologic Dementia Prevention and Early Detection Contents : Non-Randomly Equivalent Design

Hyun-Seok Jeong; Oh-Lyong Kim; Bon-Hoon Koo; Ki-Hyun Kim; Gi-Hwan Kim; Dai-Seg Bai; Ji-Yean Kim; Mun-Seon Chang; Hye-Geum Kim

doi:10.3340/jkns.2021.0153

A Study on Verification of Equivalence and Effectiveness of Non-Pharmacologic Dementia Prevention and Early Detection Contents : Non-Randomly Equivalent Design

J Korean Neurosurg Soc. 2022 Mar;65(2):315-324. doi: 10.3340/jkns.2021.0153. Epub 2022 Feb 17.

Authors

Hyun-Seok Jeong¹, Oh-Lyong Kim², Bon-Hoon Koo³, Ki-Hyun Kim⁴, Gi-Hwan Kim⁴, Dai-Seg Bai³, Ji-Yean Kim³, Mun-Seon Chang¹, Hye-Geum Kim³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, College of Social Science, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea.
² Department of Neurosurgery, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu, Korea.
³ Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu, Korea.
⁴ Corporate Research Institute of Clupea, Inc., Daegu, Korea.

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to verify the equivalence and effectiveness of the tablet-administered Korean Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (K-RBANS) for the prevention and early detection of dementia.

Methods: Data from 88 psychiatry and neurology patient samples were examined to evaluate the equivalence between tablet and paper administrations of the K-RBANS using a non-randomly equivalent group design. We calculated the prediction scores of the tablet-administered K-RBANS based on demographics and covariate-test scores for focal tests using norm samples and tested format effects. In addition, we compared the receiver operating characteristic curves to confirm the effectiveness of the K-RBANS for preventing and detecting dementia.

Results: In the analysis of raw scores, line orientation showed a significant difference (t=-2.94, p<0.001), and subtests showed small to large effect sizes (0.04-0.86) between paper- and tablet-administered K-RBANS. To investigate the format effect, we compared the predicted scaled scores of the tablet sample to the scaled scores of the norm sample. Consequently, a small effect size (d≤0.20) was observed in most of the subtests, except word list and story recall, which showed a medium effect size (d=0.21), while picture naming and subtests of delayed memory showed significant differences in the one-sample t-test. In addition, the area under the curve of the total scale index (TSI) (0.827; 95% confidence interval, 0.738-0.916) was higher than that of the five indices, ranging from 0.688 to 0.820. The sensitivity and specificity of TSI were 80% and 76%, respectively.

Conclusion: The overall results of this study suggest that the tablet-administered K-RBANS showed significant equivalence to the norm sample, although some subtests showed format effects, and it may be used as a valid tool for the brief screening of patients with neuropsychological disorders in Korea.

Keywords: Dementia; Equivalence trial; Korean Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (K-RBANS); Neuropsychological test; Research methodology.