Quantifying Risk of Financial Incapacity and Financial Exploitation in Community-dwelling Older Adults: Utility of a Scoring System for the Lichtenberg Financial Decision-making Rating Scale

• NCJ Number: 253311
• Author(s): Peter A. Lichtenberg; Evan Gross; Lisa J. Ficker
• Date Published: 2018
• Length: 16 pages
• Grant Number(s): MU-CX-0001
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Description

Annotation

This study examined the clinical utility of the scoring system for the Lichtenberg Financial Decision-making Rating Scale (LFDRS) and its usefulness for decisionmaking capacity and financial exploitation.

Abstract

The first objective was to examine the clinical utility of a person centered, empirically supported, financial decision making scale; the second objective was to determine whether the risk-scoring system created for this rating scale is sufficiently accurate for the use of cutoff scores in cases of decisional capacity and cases of suspected financial exploitation; and the third objective was to examine whether cognitive decline and decisional impairment predicted suspected financial exploitation. A total of 200 independently living, non-demented community-dwelling older adults composed the sample. Participants completed the rating scale and other cognitive measures. The study found that receiver operating characteristic curves were in the good to excellent range for decisional capacity scoring, and in the fair to good range for financial exploitation. Analyses supported the conceptual link between decisionmaking deficits and risk for exploitation; and they also supported the use of the risk-scoring system in a community-based population. This study adds to the empirical evidence supporting the use of the rating scale as a clinical tool for assessing risk for financial decisional impairment and/or financial exploitation. (publisher abstract modified)