Psychometric characteristics of the mini-mental state examination in a community population - A grade of membership analysis .1.

The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), a brief, widely used measure of cognitive status, was designed to assess functioning in five areas (orientation, registration, attention and calculation, recall and language). Using a grade of membership analysis, which does not rely on a multivariate normal distribution or assume an underlying continuum for dichotomously scored variables, we examined data from a sample of 1317 community residents 18 years of age and older who made two or more errors on the MMSE. Our findings suggest that for these primarily cognitively intact persons, the items of the MMSE varied in level of difficulty; multiple distinct areas of cognitive functioning were not identified. The results of confirmatory testing using clinic populations with cognitive deficit are given in the accompanying article.