Estimating Socio-Economic Status for Alzheimer’s Disease Trials

Metrics of a participant’s socioeconomic status (SES) are not routinely collected or standardized in clinical trials. This omission limits the ability to evaluate the generalizability of trial results and restricts clinicians from confidently interpreting the efficacy of new treatments across important sub-populations.

We adapted an SES measure of social disparity; the Hollingshead Two Factor Index of Social Position, which combines education and occupation into a single metric. We modernized the 1965 occupations to reflect the 2017 careers tabulated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. We currently use this adapted measure in Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium studies.

We present the revised table of occupations. We found that the collection of SES data using the modified Hollingshead was feasible in a multi-site clinical trial and scores were distributed across all SES strata.

The modified Hollingshead provides a standardized method for collecting SES information, enabling data aggregation, monitoring, and reporting.