Subjective memory complaints in Portuguese young adults: contributions from the adaptation of the prospective and retrospective memory questionnaire

Self-report instruments that allow to characterize the frequency of daily memory failures are essential for a comprehensive assessment of memory functioning. In this context, we aimed to provide preliminary evidence of validity and reliability for the European Portuguese adaptation of the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ). A total of 1052 healthy participants completed an online survey with the PRMQ. The exploration of the construct validity suggested the tripartite model with a general memory, a prospective memory, and a retrospective memory factors to have the best adjustment to the data. Measurement invariance across age and sex groups was also verified. The questionnaire revealed good convergent validity with a general self-report measure of memory (0.778 < r < 0.853), and satisfactory values of internal consistency (0.779 < Cronbach's alpha < 0.887) and of test-retest reliability (0.815 < r < 0.852). There were no prominent effects of sex and age in the PRMQ scores. Although the sample encompassed mainly younger and highly educated adults, this study presented the first evidence of validity and reliability for the European Portuguese version of the questionnaire.
- This work was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under a Doctoral grant (PD/BD/105964/2014) of the FCT PhD Programmes with the support of the Operational Programme for Human Capital (POCH). It was partially conducted at Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, supported by the FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the Portugal2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). The authors would like to thank particularly the original authors of the questionnaire, and the institutions that responsively helped to spread the word regarding the study, namely University of Porto and University of Beira Anterior. We would like to acknowledge Joana Coutinho, Alberto Crego, and Ana Seara-Cardoso for aiding with the translation procedures. Special thanks are also due to the members of the Neuropsychophysiology Laboratory and the Human Memory Research Group of the University of Minho for the feedback in the early stages of the questionnaire adaptation. The authors would like to acknowledge all the participants that collaborated in this work, and the reviewers whose comments helped to improve the manuscript.