It also explores areas such as how the person feels about his or her ability to do chores around the house and to take part in pleasant activities. The assessment is conducted as an interview and the person with dementia is given a copy of the questions to look at as the interviewer asks them. For each question, the interviewer specifically asks whether the rating is poor, fair, good or excellent, so the subject needs only pick out a single word. Logsdon's assessment can help clinicians identify problems. Those are all things we can help the person with dementia or the caregiver change.
Caregivers use the same questionnaire to rate the quality of life of the person with dementia.
Comparing responses, Logsdon and her colleagues can evaluate how closely the two agree. However, in most cases, she says, there is agreement between the person with dementia and the caregiver on which factors receive high and low ratings. The quality of life assessment is administered to both the caregiver and person with dementia at regular intervals over time. Keeping track of how responses compare allows Logsdon and her colleagues to rely more heavily on the caregiver's assessment as, over time, the person with dementia becomes unable to answer the questions. Logsdon's quality of life instrument is one of only a handful of such assessment tools that have been developed in an area that is brand new to Alzheimer's research.