Normative and Equated Data of the Original and Basic Versions of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment among Community Dwelling Saudi Arabians

INTRODUCTION: Currently, there are standard and basic versions of the MoCA, the latter designed for those with lower educational achievements. Community-based normative data on these versions of the MoCA from Arabic populations are deficient, and there is little data demonstrating how both scales perform in comparison. We aim to obtain normative performances from both versions and equate the measures of both scales. METHODS: Community-based recruitment of healthy volunteers ≥ 18 years of age. Participants underwent testing with both versions. Demographic data was collected with regard to age, gender, years of education, diabetes, and hypertension. Regression analysis was performed to determine significance of variables, and the circle-arc equating method was used to equate the two scores from each scale. RESULTS: 311 participants were included in the study. The mean (sd) age was 45.8 (15.96), females were 184 (59.16%), and the duration of education was 12.7 (5.67) years. The mean scores on the MoCA-A and MoCA-B were 21.47 (4.53) and 24.37 (4.71) (P < 0.0001), respectively. Multivariate regression showed significance of age and years of education in both versions (both variables with P < 0.0001). Correlation coefficient between the two scales was 0.77 (P < 0.0001). The largest equated difference between both MoCA versions was four points in those scoring from 10-20 on the MoCA-A. CONCLUSION: We present normative data from a large Saudi Arabian community-based sample with two different MoCA tests, and an equating graph is presented to determine the corresponding expected performance between the two scales.