Abstract

MELO, Denise Mendonça de; BARBOSA, Altemir José Gonçalves  and  NERI, Anita Liberalesso. Minimental State Examination: Validity evidence based on internal structure. Aval. psicol. [online]. 2017, vol.16, n.2, pp. 161-168. ISSN 1677-0471.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15689/AP.2017.1602.06.

Studies that empirically investigate the dimensionality of the Minimental State Examination (MMSE) are few. For this reason, this study aimed to obtain validity evidence based on internal structure for this measure by principal component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The sample of 2,734 community-dwelling elderly people was randomly divided into two groups: PCA (n=1,361) and CFA (n=1,373). In the PCA, a five components solution was the best - School Skills, Guidance, Short Term Memory, Memory - Evocation and Memory - Recognition. Four internal structure models were tested with CFA, including the PCA formed. Three models with a multidimensional structure of five factors and a factor of second order showed satisfactory fit indices, which did not happen with the one-dimensional model. Therefore, the MMSE seems to be a multidimensional measure, but further studies are recommended.

Keywords : aging; neuropsychological assessment; factor analysis.

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