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.