Survey
A ten-question survey(Table 1) was applied to the participants to assess the perceived stigma against AD. This questionnaire is the adaptation of the ”STIG-MA” survey developed by Piver et al. in 2012, with the author’s permission (10). Participants were asked to pretend that they had Alzheimer’s disease and rate what they felt. The questions were answered as ”yes, maybe, I don’t know, no” and scored between 0-3. The score 3 corresponded to the greatest stigma, either YES if the question was positive (questions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9) or NO if the question was negative (questions 2, 8 and 10). Other answers scored respectively. The total score indicated the stigma severity. The highest score was 30. 0-7 was graded as mild, 8-11 as a moderate, and 12 and above the high stigma.
The questions were also grouped to explore several dimensions of perceived stigma: reluctance to disclose the illness (questions 1 and 2), emotional impact (questions 3 and 4), fear of exclusion (questions 5, 6, and 9), courtesy stigma (question 7) and fear of loss of family support (questions 8 and 10)
The study’s Ethics committee approval for the research and permissions for data sharing for scientific purposes was obtained(23.12.2020 / 96537014). The Helsinki Declaration 2008 principles conducted the study.