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Numerical Activities of Daily Living – Financial: a short version

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Abstract

Financial capacity is the ability to manage money and finances according to a person’s values and self-interests. In Italy, the first instrument specifically designed to assess financial capacity has recently been developed: the Numerical Activities of Daily Living – Financial (NADL-F). The aims of this study are (1) to prepare a shorter version of NADL-F and (2) to examine the relationship between the new short version and a measure of general cognitive functioning of comparable length, the MMSE. After an item analysis performed on NADL-F, the items presenting a higher internal consistency were selected. The resulting NADL-F Short is a reliable, easy to use, and quick to administer tool for assessing financial capacity both in clinical and legal practice. Correlation analysis showed a low positive correlation between four NADL-F Short tasks and the MMSE, for the healthy participants group. For the patient group, instead, a low-moderate correlation was found for all the NADL-F Short tasks, except one. Many participants scoring high in the MMSE (both healthy controls and neurological patients) showed low NADL-F Short scores. These findings suggest that it is not correct to use generic tools like the MMSE to make inferences on a person’s financial capacity.

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Funding

The writing of this paper was made possible by the support of “Progetto giovani ricercatori: FINAGE” (GR-2018-12367927) from the Ministry of Health to F.B.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, Via Alberoni 70, 30126, Venice Lido, Italy

    Roberta Toffano, Francesca Burgio, Francesca Meneghello, Giorgio Arcara & Carlo Semenza

  2. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy

    Katie Palmer

  3. Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Silvia Benavides-Varela

  4. Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Silvia Benavides-Varela & Giuseppe Sartori

  5. Department of Surgical, Medical, Molecular & Critical Area Pathology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Graziella Orrù

  6. Department of Neuroscience (Padova Neuroscience Center), University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Carlo Semenza

Authors
  1. Roberta Toffano
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  2. Francesca Burgio
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  3. Katie Palmer
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  4. Silvia Benavides-Varela
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  5. Francesca Meneghello
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  6. Graziella Orrù
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  7. Giuseppe Sartori
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  8. Giorgio Arcara
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  9. Carlo Semenza
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Roberta Toffano, Francesca Burgio, Giorgio Arcara, Silvia Benavides-Varela, and Grazella Orrù. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Roberta Toffano and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roberta Toffano.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

All participants gave their informed consent according to the Helsinki Declaration. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee for clinical experimentation of Venice and IRCCS San Camillo Hospital Foundation (Venice, Italy), reference number 2016.07.

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Toffano, R., Burgio, F., Palmer, K. et al. Numerical Activities of Daily Living – Financial: a short version. Neurol Sci 42, 4183–4191 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-021-05047-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-021-05047-y

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