Cognitive Change among Workers of Noisy Environments-Translation, Adaptation, and Validation of Cognitive Change Questionnaire 8-Tamil (CCQ8-T)

Abstract

Background: Cognitive change has been one of the early sign for dementia. The Cognitive Change Questionnaire-8 (CCQ-8) is a brief, informant-based screening instrument for cognitive change, suitable for use in community surveys. The purpose of this study was to find out the level of cognitive change, however, there is no validated Tamil version of CCQ8 and we translated and validated the CCQ-8 in Tamil among workers exposed to noisy environments.

Methods: A sample of 102 workers of noisy environments with an age group of 25-46 yrs were randomly selected based on willingness to participate in the study. As per guidelines Content validity was assessed by five experts and psychometric properties of the CCQ-8-T were evaluated using internal consistency, test-retest reliability, construct validity (exploratory factor analysis), concurrent validity (correlation with MoCA) and Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) after two weeks for test–retest analysis.

Results: The level of cognitive change using CCQ-T, diagnosed 65% as having cognitive impairment, and 35% had no cognitive impairment. CCQ-8-T shows S-CVI/Ave=0.98, and exploratory factor analysis supported the unidimensional construct (0.779-0.889). CCQ-T had strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.93) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.76). There was a very strong negative correlation between CCQ-8 and MoCA scores (r = -0.705, p < .001).

Conclusion: The level of Cognitive change found to be 65% diagnosed with the validated and culturally adapted CCQ-8-T and also strong correlation with MoCA. It was reliable tool in measuring of perceived cognitive difficulties at Tamil-speaking noisy environmental workers in community settings.