Neuropsychological assessment is the gold standard for cognitive testing and is crucial for diagnosis and monitoring of cognitive impairments across various neurological disorders, particularly those that will be more prevalent with an aging population (i.e. Alzheimer’s). However, these assessments are not readily available for older adults living in rural regions and have lower accuracy with racialized groups. A promising solution to overcome these barriers is to develop and validate online computerized cognitive tests in conjunction with citizen science approaches to ensure racialized communities are better represented in the research. This approach will result in clinical tools that are more accessible and accurate for a larger percentage of the Canadian population.

The research objectives are to a) determine the validity and reliability of computerized cognitive tests administered online, in comparison to well-established experimental studies; b) to recruit a racially-diverse sample of community-dwelling older adults to explore the interaction between cognitive test performance and relevant demographic variables (i.e. age, gender, race, annual household income, health history); and c) to collect usability data to determine the feasibility of this method of cognitive testing in a community setting.