Objective: ScnsitMty and specificity of several psychometric tests were evaluated to provide practical instruments tor dementia diagnosis in low educational population. Method: A total of 3244 residents aged 55 ycars and over were drawn through a stratified multiple cluster sampling, 62 percent were illiterate or have elementary education. Door to door screening to all participants were conducted in phase 1 using Chinese version of Mini-Mental State Examination (CMMSE), then followed up and identified dementia through a set of diagnostic examination in phase Il . Cases were ascertained by DSM-Ⅳ criteria for dementia. 457 subjects1 had competed more than one of these psychometric tests, including Fuld Object-Memory Evaluation (FOM), Rapid Verbal Retreve(RVR), Block Design (BD), and Digit Span (DS). 145 cases were divided into 3 subgroup, illiterate group (48.28%), elementary education group (26.2 l%), and high education group (25.54%). Result: Specificity of FOM and RVR were more than 94% in all groups while Sensitivity were between 52-78%. Specificity of BD and DS were between 72-85% and 78-98% respectively. Specificity of BD and DS have tendency to increasing while sensitivity of BD and DS declined obviously with increasing of educationievel. Specificity of series test was more than 97% except for BD and DS. Conclusion: Sensitivity and specificity of FOM amd RVR were good in different education group. BD and DS were good in low educational group. So the four psychometric tests were suitable instruments tor low education level population in our country.
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