C-Reactive Protein (CRP)

Secretory Immunoglobulin-A (s-IgA)

The Kingston Caregiver Stress Scale.This tool is designed to assess levels of perceived stress associated with caregiving in informal carers. The scale comprises three sections that assess levels of stress in relation to care-related feelings; family matters; and financial stresses. Higher scores indicate higher levels of stress

The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), The PSS is a 10-item scale which measures the extent to which participants perceive their lives to be overwhelming, uncontrollable and unpredictable.Scale responses range from 0 (never) to 4 (very often) and items are summed to yield a total score. Higher scores indicate greater perceived levels of stress, experienced over the previous month

Cohen Hoberman Inventory of Physical Symptoms.The CHIPS was designed as a measure of perceived burden due to the experience of a range of physical symptoms. The scale comprises a list of 33 common everyday symptoms (e.g. 'acne', 'diarrhoea', 'heart pounding or racing') and asks respondents 'how much that problem has bothered or distressed you during the past two weeks including today'. Items are scored for 1-5, then summed across all items. Higher scores indicate worse health

SF-20. The survey measures health across 6 domains: physical functioning (6 questions), role functioning (2 questions), social functioning (1 question), mental health (5 questions), health perceptions (5 questions), and pain (1 question).Scores across each of these domains are reported on a 0% to 100% scale, with 0% representing the worst possible score in that domain and 100% the best possible score. Raw scores are transformed to fit the 0% to 100% interval as described in the original publication (note that for question #1 on general health, an initial transformation is performed as follows: 1 = 5, 2 = 4.36, 3 = 3.43, 4 = 1.99, 5 = 1). Reversal of scoring is completed as necessary such that the highest score always represents the best possible score. The exception to this scoring pattern is the pain score, for which 0% represents the best possible score and 100% the worst possible score,

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale. is an appropriate instrument to assess independent living skills.There are eight domains of function measured with the Lawton IADL scale.

Women are scored on all 8 areas of function; historically, for men, the areas of food preparation, housekeeping, laundering are excluded.

Clients are scored according to their highest level of functioning in that category. A summary score ranges from 0 (low function, dependent) to 8 (high function, independent) for women, and 0 through 5 for men.

Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, this is a 14 item scales, with scale responsed rangin from 0 to 5. Scores are summed to produce separate scores for anxiety and depression. Higher scores indicate more frequent feelings of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Scores between 0 and 7 are considered normal. Scores between 8 and 10 are indicative of borderline mood disorder and scores > 11 indicates probable mood disorder

Profile of Moods States (POMS). This comprises 37 items with response ranging from 'not at all' to 'extremely'. Scores from the POMS-SF are used to derive a total score for 'mood disturbance', as well as subscores for the domains of 'tension', 'depressed', 'anger', 'vigour', 'fatigue' and 'concentration'. A total score disturbance score can also be calculated by adding the scores from the first five of these global scores and subtracting 'vigour

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) The STAI is a widely used instrument consisting of two subscales assessing 'State' and 'Trait' anxiety respectively. Each subscale contains 20 statements (e.g. 'I am calm') each with a 4-point Likert scale, giving a range of potential scores from 20 to 80. Participants rate how much they feel like each statement at the time of making the response (State subscale), and how much they generally feel like each statement (Trait subscale). Higher scores indicate greater anxiety.

NASA-Task Load Index. The NASA-TLX comprises a set of six scales anchored with 'Low' and 'High' at the extreme points. Three of the scales reflect the demand placed upon the respondent by the task (Mental Demand, Physical Demand, Temporal Demand), whereas three reflect the interaction between the respondent and the task (Effort, Perceived Performance, Frustration).

Task performance on the Multi-Tasking Framework (MTF),

Prospective and Retrospective memory Questionnaire, The PRMQ is a 16 item scale that quantifies memory failures for everyday tasks over two subscales: prospective memory (e.g., do you forget appointments if you are not prompted by someone else or by a reminder such as a calendar or diary?) and retrospective memory (e.g., do you fail to do something you were supposed to do a few minutes later even though it's there in front of you, like take a pill or turn off the kettle?). Scale responses range from 1 (never) to 5 (very often), and higher scores indicate poorer everyday memory.

A covert measure of prospective memory, whereby participants will be asked to remember to return a reminder slip with their 'participant number' written on, which will be posted out before testing visits.

Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. The PSQI assesses seven factors - subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleep medication and daytime dysfunction - via questions regarding sleep timings and zero to three-point scales in which participants rate whether they have experienced a number of issues (e.g. 'During the past week, how often have you had trouble sleeping because you have had bad dreams?') from 'not during the past week' to '3 or more times in the past week'. A global sleep score is created by totalling the seven subfactor scores, with higher scores indicating poorer sleep quality.

Yale Physical Activity Scale, The YPAS is an interviewer-administered questionnaire developed to assess physical activity in older adults. The YPAS is divided into two sections: in the first section, there is a comprehensive physical work, exercise, and recreational activities checklist to assess time spent in these types of activities during a typical week in the past month. The second section contains questions to quickly assess an individual's participation in five activity dimensions: vigorous activity, leisurely walking, moving on feet, standing, and sitting. Responses on the YPAS allow eight summary indices to be calculated: total time spent per week in all physical activities, weekly energy expenditure in kcal per week, five individual indices for the activity dimensions, and an activity dimension summary index

Falls Efficacy Scale, measures of "fear of falling" or, more properly, "concerns about falling.To calculate the FES-I score when all items are completed, simply add the scores for each item together to give a total that ranges from a minimum 16 (no concern about falling) to maximum 64 (severe concern about falling).

Timed up and Go Test, length of time in seconds it takes participants to stand form a chair, walk 3 metres, turn around and sit back down in chair.

Grip Strength. 3 trials on non dominant hand. Measured in kg.

Balance tests. Measured to see if participants can hold 3 stances for 10s. If they can they are awarded 1 point, if not 0 points.

Lubben Social Network Scale, This measure uses 6 questions: 3 key questions evaluate the size of 3 different aspects of social network that are attributable to family ties and a parallel set attributable to friendship ties. Each LSNS-6 question is scored on a 0 to 5 scale. The total score is an equally weighted sum of these 6 questions, with scores ranging from 0 to 30.

Convoy Method. • Respondents are presented with a set of three concentric circles, with the word 'You' contained within a smaller circle in the middle. Respondents are asked to think about "people who are important in your life right now, but who are not equally close". Respondents are then asked to think about "people to whom you feel so close it is hard to imagine life without them"; these people are entered into the innermost circle. For the next circle respondents are asked to consider "people to whom you may not feel quite that close but who are still very important to you". Finally, in the outer circle respondents are asked to place "People whom you haven't already mentioned but who are close enough and important enough in your life that they are part of your personal network". The numbers of people within each network are counted and can be used to represent support networks in each of the categories and / or summed to produce an index of total social network size

The De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale,This tool can be used to provide a single index of loneliness in addition to indices of 'Emotional Loneliness' and 'Social Loneliness' . To score the answers to the scale, the neutral and positive answers are scored as "1" on the negatively worded questions and On the positively worded items, the neutral and negative answers are scored as "1"

Blood biomarkers taken to assess impact of nutritional status, this will measure vitmain B12, ferritin and folate.