Alzheimer's Concern Screen: 16 Questions About Change From Before
Sixteen plain questions about how much has changed compared with a year or two ago, in memory, words, orientation, everyday tasks, judgment and mood. You can answer about yourself or about someone you are worried about. It gives you a concern level and a clear next step, and it is honest that no online test can detect Alzheimer's disease.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWAlzheimer's Concern Screen is a free, confidential 16-question self-assessment, original screen informed by change-from-baseline measures. It takes about 6 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language score across 3 interpretation bands plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
Change from how things used to be, which is what actually matters
Forgetting a name is not the signal. Change is. The most useful question in early dementia assessment is not whether memory is perfect but whether it is different from this person's own previous ability, and that is what these sixteen questions ask. They cover memory and language, orientation and getting around, everyday tasks like money and medication, and changes in judgment, mood and personality, plus how long the change has been going on. This is a screening for education and self-reflection, not a diagnosis.
Change, not performance
Every question compares now with how things used to be, which is the logic behind informant measures like the AD8 and the IQCODE. It is why these questions work for a highly educated person whose memory has slipped and for someone who never found lists easy. We ask about your own baseline, not a population average.
Answerable about yourself or about someone else
A lot of the people searching for this are worried about a parent, not themselves. Every question is worded for either, and you decide which before you start. Family members often notice changes earlier than the person does, and that observation is genuinely valuable to a doctor.
The same honest next step, whatever the score
No online test can detect Alzheimer's disease, and the twelve-question tests people search for are clinician screens, not self-tests. Every result here ends with what a real assessment involves and with the treatable conditions that mimic dementia and are worth ruling out first.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| What the questions ask | Puzzles and recall tasks scored as right or wrong | Change from previous ability, which is what early assessment turns on |
| Who can answer | The person only | The person or a family member, with every question worded for both |
| What it claims | Implies it can detect or rule out Alzheimer's | States plainly that no online test can, and that only a clinician can assess |
| Treatable mimics named | Rarely | Thyroid, B12, depression, medication, sleep and hearing, in every result |
| Says what an assessment involves | No | History, in-person cognitive testing, blood tests and sometimes imaging |
| Clinician-reviewed interpretation | Rarely | Yes, clinician reviewed |
| Answers stay on your device | Often collected | Scored in your browser; only summary scores if you request a PDF or report |
How scoring works
Answers are scored 0–48 in total. Your result falls into one of 3 bands:
| Score | Band | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0–11 | Little reported change | You reported little change from how things used to be. That is reassuring as far as it goes, and it does not replace a medical opinion. |
| 12–27 | Some reported change | You described a real change from how things used to be, in at least one area. That is worth an appointment rather than more waiting. |
| 28–48 | Substantial reported change | You described substantial change across several areas of daily life. Please make a doctor's appointment about this, and soon. |
How this screen is scored
Sixteen statements, each rated from 0 (not at all) to 3 (a great deal), for a total from 0 to 48. Every statement compares the present with how things used to be, so you are rating the size of a change rather than how good or bad memory is in absolute terms. Three concern levels cover the range: 0 to 11, 12 to 27 and 28 to 48.
Those ranges are educational bands written for this page. They are not clinical cutoffs, and they are not borrowed from any validated instrument, because the instruments this screen is informed by use their own items and their own thresholds. The AD8, for example, treats two or more endorsed items as a positive result on its own eight questions; that threshold belongs to the AD8 and cannot be transferred here.
The four areas in the breakdown, memory and language, orientation and getting around, everyday tasks, and judgment, mood and the overall picture, are our own groupings of our own items, four questions each. They are not validated subscales. They are worth reading anyway, because the pattern is informative in a way the total is not: trouble that sits almost entirely in mood and interest looks different to a clinician than trouble spread across memory, orientation and daily tasks.
What this screen is and what it is not
This is a structured way to organize what you have noticed. That is genuinely useful: a doctor's first question is almost always what has changed and when, and arriving with sixteen specific answers rather than a vague worry makes the appointment better. It is not a test for Alzheimer's disease, and it cannot be one.
No online questionnaire can detect Alzheimer's. Diagnosis is clinical and multi-part: a history, usually taken with someone who knows the person well, cognitive testing done in person, blood tests, and in many cases brain imaging, with the imaging used largely to look for other explanations such as stroke or a tumor. Alzheimer's is one cause of dementia among several, and distinguishing it from vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia or frontotemporal dementia is work that needs a clinician.
If you came here after searching for an Alzheimer's test with 12 questions, it is worth knowing what those are. The short clinician screens, the AD8 among them, are designed to be administered and interpreted by a professional as one piece of an assessment, usually with an informant. They are not self-tests, their published thresholds only mean something inside that process, and a score on any of them is a reason to look further rather than an answer.
Normal aging, mild cognitive impairment and dementia
Memory does change with age, and most of that change is not disease. Taking longer to retrieve a name, losing a train of thought when interrupted, or needing a list where you once did not are common and, on their own, unremarkable. The usual rough distinction is whether the difficulty is an annoyance or whether it has started to cost you something: forgetting where you parked is ordinary, forgetting that you drove is not.
Between ordinary aging and dementia sits mild cognitive impairment, where the change is measurable and noticeable but daily life is still managed independently. Some people with mild cognitive impairment progress to dementia, some stay stable for years, and some improve, particularly where something treatable was driving it. That is one of the better reasons to be assessed rather than to wait and watch.
Dementia is the term for cognitive change severe enough to interfere with independent daily living, and Alzheimer's disease is its most common cause. For the broader question of dementia rather than Alzheimer's specifically, Dementia Test covers the same ground with a wider lens.
If what you are noticing is fuzziness, slow thinking and poor concentration rather than change in memory and orientation, Brain Fog Test is likely the closer fit, and Memory & Dementia Concern Screen is a shorter structured self-check.
What to do next, including the treatable causes
Make a doctor's appointment and bring specifics: three or four concrete examples with rough dates, a full list of medications and supplements, and, if you can, someone who knows the person well. Write down when the change started and whether it came on gradually over months or suddenly over days, because a sudden change is a different and more urgent question.
Ask about the treatable things first, because several conditions produce memory trouble that looks like early dementia and improves when the cause is addressed: an underactive thyroid, low vitamin B12, depression, side effects or interactions from medication, poor or disrupted sleep including sleep apnea, and untreated hearing loss. The 2024 Lancet standing Commission on dementia identifies hearing loss among the modifiable risk factors for dementia itself, so getting hearing checked is worth doing on both counts. Depression in particular is easy to mistake for cognitive decline and is very treatable.
If you are the one doing the worrying and the caring, look after that too. Caregiver strain is real, it builds quietly, and it tends to be the thing that determines how long someone can keep caring well. Our screener at Caregiver Burnout Quiz is written for that, and Depression Test is worth taking yourself if the low mood is yours. The directory below can help you find a professional, and a doctor's appointment remains the first move whatever this page said.
Methodology & sources
The sixteen items on this page are original, written for Psychology.com. They are informed by the logic of two established informant measures without reproducing either: the AD8 (Galvin et al., 2005), which asks about change rather than performance and was built to separate people with no dementia from those with very mild impairment, and the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (Jorm and Korten, 1988), whose strength is that rating change from a person's own earlier ability is relatively unaffected by education, premorbid ability and language background. No item or scoring rule from either instrument is reproduced here; the domains any dementia screen must cover overlap, the wording is our own, and neither instrument's validation evidence transfers to this screen. It has no validation study of its own.
Each item is rated from 0 (not at all) to 3 (a great deal), giving a total from 0 to 48, and the three concern levels, 0 to 11, 12 to 27 and 28 to 48, are educational ranges rather than clinical cutoffs. We deliberately did not adopt a published threshold: the AD8's rule of two or more endorsed items, which Galvin and colleagues reported at 74 percent sensitivity and 86 percent specificity in their first sample, applies to the AD8's own eight items administered by a clinician, and borrowing a cutoff across instruments would make the result look more precise than it is. The four breakdown areas, memory and language, orientation and getting around, everyday tasks, and judgment, mood and the overall picture, are our own groupings of four items each, not validated subscales.
The page is explicit that no online test can detect Alzheimer's disease. Diagnosis is clinical and layered: history taking, usually with an informant, cognitive testing administered in person such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (Nasreddine et al., 2005) or the Mini-Mental State Examination (Folstein et al., 1975), blood tests, and in many cases brain imaging used substantially to look for other causes. The treatable conditions named in every result, thyroid dysfunction, low vitamin B12, depression, medication effects, disrupted sleep including sleep apnea, and untreated hearing loss, are included because they can cause or worsen cognitive difficulty and because hearing loss appears among the modifiable risk factors in the 2024 Lancet standing Commission report on dementia. Items are worded for either the person themselves or a family member answering about them, because both routes are common and family members often notice a change first.
References
- Galvin JE, Roe CM, Powlishta KK, Coats MA, Muich SJ, Grant E, Miller JP, Storandt M, Morris JC. The AD8: a brief informant interview to detect dementia. Neurology. 2005;65(4):559-564. doi.org/10.1212/01.wnl.0000172958.95282.2a
- Jorm AF, Korten AE. Assessment of cognitive decline in the elderly by informant interview. British Journal of Psychiatry. 1988;152(2):209-213. doi.org/10.1192/bjp.152.2.209
- Nasreddine ZS, Phillips NA, Bedirian V, Charbonneau S, Whitehead V, Collin I, Cummings JL, Chertkow H. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: a brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2005;53(4):695-699. doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53221.x
- Folstein MF, Folstein SE, McHugh PR. Mini-mental state: a practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 1975;12(3):189-198. doi.org/10.1016/0022-3956(75)90026-6
- Livingston G, Huntley J, Liu KY, et al. Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission. The Lancet. 2024;404(10452):572-628. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01296-0
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). Alzheimer's Concern Screen. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/alzheimers
Alzheimer's Concern Screen FAQ
Can an online test detect Alzheimer's?
No. Not this one and not any other. Diagnosis needs a history taken in person, usually with someone who knows the person well, cognitive testing administered by a clinician, blood tests, and often brain imaging. What a questionnaire can do is organize what you have noticed into something specific enough to be useful at an appointment, which is what this page is for.
What about the Alzheimer's test with 12 questions?
The short screens people find under that search, including the eight-question AD8, are clinician tools. They are designed to be given and interpreted by a professional, usually with an informant, as one part of an assessment, and their published thresholds only mean something inside that process. They are not self-tests, and a number from one of them is a reason to look further rather than an answer.
Can I answer this about my mother or father?
Yes. Every question is worded for either yourself or someone you are thinking of, and you decide which before you start. Answering about a family member is a recognized approach rather than second best: informant reports pick up change from a person's own earlier ability, which is exactly what matters early on, and relatives often notice before the person does. Bring your answers to the appointment, and go with them if you can.
Which memory changes are just normal aging?
Taking longer to find a name, losing a thought when interrupted, or needing a list where you once did not are common with age and are not, on their own, signs of disease. The rough distinction most clinicians use is whether the difficulty has started to cost something: forgetting where you parked is ordinary, forgetting that you drove is not. Repeating the same question in one conversation, getting lost on a familiar route and trouble managing money or medication all belong in the second group.
What can cause memory problems other than dementia?
Several things, and some of them are treatable, which is one of the best reasons to be seen rather than to wait. An underactive thyroid, low vitamin B12, depression, medication side effects and interactions, disrupted sleep including sleep apnea, and untreated hearing loss can all cause or worsen memory and thinking difficulties. Depression is especially easy to mistake for cognitive decline; our depression test is a reasonable thing to take alongside this one.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are scored in your browser and are never sent to us or linked to you. They stay in this tab so you can return to your result, and closing or clearing the tab clears them. If you ask us to email the PDF, we receive your summary scores with your email address, never your individual answers. No account is needed.