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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Dec 21.
Published in final edited form as: Ann Intern Med. 2019 Apr 16;170(10):702–709. doi: 10.7326/M18-2711

Appendix Table.

Items Used to Assess Scam Awareness and Descriptive Data on the Percentage of Respondents Who Responded Incorrectly to Each Item*

Item Respondents Who Answered Incorrectly (n = 935), %

1. I answer the telephone whenever it rings, even if I do not know who is calling. 76
2. I have difficulty ending a telephone call, even if the caller is a telemarketer, someone I do not know, or someone I did not wish to call me. 11
3. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.   5
4. Persons older than 65 y are often targeted by con artists.   5
5. When telemarketers call me, I usually listen to what they have to say. 24
*

The total score used in analyses was the average of ratings of agreement or disagreement across all 5 statements; items 1, 2, and 5 were reverse-coded such that higher scores indicate lower awareness. However, responses to each item can be rated as correct or incorrect depending on a participant’s agreement or disagreement with each item. For example, for item 4, only responses indicating agreement are correct, because the fact that persons aged ≥65 y are frequently targeted by con artists is well established. For descriptive purposes, we scored responses to each item as correct or incorrect and calculated the percentage of persons who answered each item incorrectly. Of note, the percentages of persons who answered each item incorrectly were similar when calculated separately for those with mild cognitive impairment and those who were cognitively intact at baseline.