Abstract INTRODUCTION The Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale typically is administered in person, but use of telephone‐based, informant‐only assessments increased during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. The correspondence of informant‐only assessments with in‐person ratings remains unclear. METHODS We analyzed 1,140 paired in‐person and telephone assessments from the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Memory and Aging Project conducted within 12 months. Agreement for global CDR and CDR Sum of Boxes (CDR‐SB) was examined using kappa statistics, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), and Bland–Altman methods; classification performance of telephone global CDR score ≥ 0.5 was assessed. RESULTS Agreement for the global CDR was moderate ( κ = 0.53, 95% CI: 0.47–0.59). CDR‐SB demonstrated moderate reliability (ICC = 0.69, 95% confidence interval CI: 0.65–0.73). Telephone CDR‐SB scores averaged 0.40 points higher than in‐person scores, with wide limits of agreement. Sensitivity was 64.2% and specificity 91.9%. DISCUSSION Telephone CDR‐SB shows moderate concordance with in‐person CDR‐SB but shows consistent score inflation, which may limit clinical staging utility.
Assfaw et al. (Mon,) studied this question.