IQCODE Cognitive Decline Screening

The Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly, developed by Anthony Jorm and colleagues at the Australian National University. A relative or friend rates how an older person's everyday memory and thinking compare with 10 years ago. The 16-item short form (1994) performs as well as the original 26-item version and takes about five minutes.

If you are answering about someone else — a parent, partner or friend — choose the informant version: it is the version used in research and clinical practice. Choose the self-report version only when no informant is available; it is a convenient adaptation whose validation evidence is more limited, so its results should be read with extra caution.

No. This is a screening questionnaire that flags whether reported changes over the past 10 years warrant professional attention. Diagnosing dementia requires clinical assessment — history, examination, cognitive testing and often laboratory or imaging work. A screening result can be a useful starting point for that conversation with a doctor.

The result is the average of 16 ratings on a 1–5 scale, where 3 means no change on average. Below 3.0 suggests little reported change; 3.0–3.3 suggests slight changes worth monitoring; at or above 3.31 — the threshold from validation research — the result suggests changes that deserve professional attention. It is an indication, not a diagnosis.

The MoCA is a performance test: it measures how well someone's memory and thinking work right now. The IQCODE captures observed change over the past 10 years, typically reported by someone who knows the person well. Because they measure different things, the two are complementary — a performance test can look normal early on even when a close informant notices real changes.