Preliminary Findings of the Brief Everyday Activities Measurement (BEAM) in Older Adults.

Objectives: Functional losses are common in healthy and cognitively impaired older adults. However, subtle declines in instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) are not always detected in self-reports. Performance IADL measurements are financially and time burdensome, restricting their use in varied settings. To address these limitations, we developed the Brief Everyday Activities Measure (BEAM), a short (< 5 minutes) objective IADL measure that assesses medication and finance management.
Design and Participants: The BEAM was administered to 209 cognitively non-demented community-dwellers (ages 65 - 95 years).
Measurements: Participants completed standardized motor, neuropsychological, psychological, and self-report functional assessments.
Results: BEAM completion time ranged from 54.16 to 259.31 seconds. Interclass correlations (ICC) for total BEAM completion time was moderate (0.65, 95% CI [.43 -.78]). Accuracy for total BEAM performance was in the low-moderate range (Kappa = 0.38, p < .001, 95% CI [.18 -.54]). As predicted, lower accuracy and longer time to complete the BEAM were both associated with worse executive functions, attention, and processing speed.
Conclusions: Medication and finance management can be efficiently assessed within five minutes. The BEAM may be a valuable screening tool to evaluate these functional abilities.