SF-DEM is a patient- and carer-reported outcome measure designed for the assessment of the social functioning of people with dementia.
Scale development and validation
SF-DEM consists of two questionnaires.
- SF-DEM - Person with dementia: a 20 item interviewer-administered questionnaire answered by a person with dementia
- SF-DEM - Carer: a 20 item interviewer-administered questionnaire answered by a family carer of a person with dementia
The social functioning in dementia scale was developed and validated using key psychometric principles in a population of older people living in Camden and Islington, London (Sommerlad et al 2017). We undertook a further validation study and established the factor structure in a multi-centre study based in London and Sussex (Budgett et al 2019) and have established the minimum clinically important difference for the scale (Levene et al 2022).
Researchers in Germany have translated and validated the SF-DEM (Grothe et al 2022). Collaborators in Denmark, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey and Hong Kong are currently translating and validating the scale for their local settings.
SF-DEM Files for download
SF-DEM is freely available for use by other researchers under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
German SF-DEM
Hong Kong (Cantonese) SF-DEM
Danish SF-DEM
Taiwanese SF-DEM
Validation studies
- Sommerlad, A., Singleton, D., Jones, R., Banerjee, S., Livingston, G. Development of an instrument to assess social functioning in dementia: The Social Functioning in Dementia scale (SF-DEM). Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring. 2017: 7;88-98 doi: 10.1016/j.dadm.2017.02.001
Budgett J, Brown A, Daley S, Page T, Banerjee S, Livingston G, Sommerlad A. The social functioning in dementia scale (SF-DEM): Exploratory factor analysis and psychometric properties in mild, moderate and severe dementia. Alzheimer’s and Dementia Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring 2019. 11:45-52 doi: 10.1016/j.dadm.2018.11.001
Grothe J, Luppa M, Dietzel J, Schomerus G, Sommerlad A, Riedel-Heller SG, Röhr S. Psychometric evaluation of the German version of the Social Functioning in Dementia scale. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 2022. 86(3):1231-41 doi: 10.3233/JAD-215557
Levene T, Livingston G, Banerjee S, Sommerlad A. The minimum clinically-important difference of the Social Functioning in Dementia Scale (SF-DEM): cross-sectional study and Delphi study. BMJ Open 2022;12:e058252