The Memory Functioning Questionnaire for assessment of memory complaints in adulthood and old age.

The results of psychometric analyses of the Metamemory Questionnaire (MQ; Zelinski, Gilewski, & Thompson, 1980), developed to evaluate perception of everyday memory functioning, are presented for a sample of 343 men and 435 women aged 16 to 89. Exploratory factor analysis yielded 4 correlated factors--General Frequency of Forgetting, Seriousness of Forgetting, Retrospective Functioning, and Mnemonics Usage--which accounted for 36.7% of the variance in responses to the MQ. Factor structure was invariant across age groups (16-54 vs. 55-89 years), 2 independent samples, and over 3 years. Because some of the original MQ scales did not load on the factors, only 64 of the original 92 items were retained for inclusion in the Memory Functioning Questionnaire (MFQ). Internal consistency of MFQ scores is high. The MFQ is therefore reliable for evaluating memory self-appraisals.