Objective

To develop and evaluate a multidisciplinary needs assessment tool for people with dementia living in the community and their carers.

Design

The measure was developed through applying a theory of need, generating content, consultation with potential users and refinement and evaluation.

Validity was established incrementally through the development process.

Setting

The development and evaluation was conducted in a variety of settings, including multidisciplinary dementia community care teams, social work departments, day hospitals, and inpatient and residential care.

Patients

The evaluation included community patients with a formal diagnosis of dementia (N=34) and consultation with a multidisciplinary group of potential users (N=23).

The development process included inpatients with a formal diagnosis of dementia (N=157) and consultation with potential users (N=170) from a range of professions including both health and social care.

Measures

Interrater reliability was assessed using the kappa statistic.

Social validity was estimated using a measure developed for this purpose as part of the development process.

Results

The evaluation of interrater reliability demonstrated that three-quarters of assessors agreed on at least 85% of items in the CarenapD.

The kappa statistic demonstrated that agreement for 76.2% of items in the CarenapD was'good'or better (ie kappa>0.75), for 12.4% of items it was'fair'or'moderate'. (...)