Table 2.

Responses to the Open-Ended Format

Complaint Level	Verbatim Examples
None (n = 47)	I think it’s pretty good. I haven’t noticed any problems or changes.
	I think it’s been pretty good. As a young person I had a very good memory or an excellent memory.
	I have a good memory, normal memory. I am still working. I remember lots of things.
	I think it is good, pretty good with faces and names and with certain areas of my interest.
	It is excellent, the work I do, dealing with big companies. Really important things to remember… I don’t have any problem with it.
Age related (n = 89)	I find I don’t come up with names as rapidly as it used to, but I’ll come up with it later.
	I think it’s generally good, but I have trouble especially calling up names and also words that I know on crossword puzzles and until I get a hint I can’t remember them. I think that is much more than it used to be. But I notice I’m not alone in that, and otherwise I think my memory is good.
	I guess my memory is average for my age. There are times when I have some memory loss but so do my other friends of the same age.
	I am considered a very bright person but I start a sentence and suddenly I forget where I was. Every people of my age is feeling the same thing… I don’t remember where I put my glasses, again people much younger than me do the same thing, But I don’t like it.
	I have my good days and my bad days actually. My memory is not too good, I can’t remember your name. I guess I am about average. They used to be really good, right now for my age, I am not doing bad.
Significant (n = 7)	It’s starting to worry me because I find that I forget a lot of things like people’s names. It seems to be getting worse.
	I worry a lot about it because my mother had AD and I know that I have APOE 3 and 4 gene. I do forget and I get very distracted. I get ADD when I’m doing things….
	It’s dwindling. Hereditary….My mother at my age started to forget things and that really bothers me, forgetting. Because I know that I sound paranoid and I’m always accusing people of something.
	They’re declining. Short time memory is going rapidly away. I never was too much account for names but it’s gone beyond that now. Places, time, appointment book. I don’t trust my brain. It’s awful I do this because I always earned my living being cognitive instead of physical and my cognitive functions are beginning to go.
	I forget things. I have to ask things a second or third time. More than before.
	I think as I age my memory gets worse and worse and it’s frightening for me because my father had AD and it seems to run in my family.
	Not good, my memory is deteriorating; I don’t know why. Age, lack of exercise, I drink wine. I forget things, sort of kind of diagnosis AD, I diagnosed myself not by a doctor, I can’t remember. I can talk to you, I can read something and then my mind goes somewhere else.