Assessing wandering risk among individuals with Alzheimer's disease and dementia: a pilot study.

Background: We examined a screening instrument to assess risk for wandering among individuals with Alzheimer's disease and dementia according to caregiver informants.

Methods: Pilot data were collected on the Risk of Wandering (RoW) screening instrument by 48 responses from an online survey using the Alzheimer's Association Trial Match system.

Results: Results indicated acceptable evidence of the internal consistency of scores for the data obtained, α = 0.81. Receiver operating characteristic curve results indicated acceptable evidence of the screening instrument scores' ability to discriminate between individuals who eloped and those who did not wander off, AUC = 0.72, P = 0.003.

Conclusions: A cut-off score for future use is suggested along with directions for future research. The development of a screening instrument would appear to be preferable to restricting the movement of these individuals or unnecessarily invading their privacy through monitoring devices while simultaneously balancing the desire to prevent distress, serious injury, or death.