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Proctor or Doctor: An Analysis of Survey Data from Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

Artem Kreimer, Department of Mathematics, Washington University in St. Louis

March 26, 2012 - 4:15 pm to 5:15 pm
Location: Cupples I, Room 6 | Host: Prof. Jimin Ding

Undergraduate Senior Honors Thesis Presentation
Abstract: In this paper, we look at the cognitive data collected over twelve years about patients at risk for Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The goal is to evaluate the power of the questionnaire to predict the onset of AD. Answers to a set of 268 survey questions such as, "Who is the president right now?" and, "Here is a string of numbers; can you tell them to me backwards?" are collected at each clinic visit. These answers are combined algorithmically to produce a score assessment of global cognitive ability. We first propose a functional Pearson correlation coefficient, taking into account longitudinal dependence within a patient. We then look at the correlations between the question responses at a time, t, and the global cognitive scores at a future time, t+n, for various values of n. Selecting a subset of the 268 questions by inspecting these correlations, we examine the subject, question, and demographic effects estimated by a logistic item response model on the subjects' answers. We also look at how those effects can model global cognitive ability. Finally, we propose a multi-state survival model that we can fit when survival data from the study becomes available.

 

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