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Objectives To assess the feasibility and validity of the International Dementia Alliance ( IDEAL) instrument for Informal Caregivers ( IDEAL- IC), which is based on the IDEAL instrument for professionals ( IDEAL-P), for staging individuals with dementia. Design Cross-sectional. Setting Memory clinic of a university hospital. Participants Informal caregivers of 73 community-dwelling elderly adults referred to a memory clinic and six geriatric registrars. Measurements Caregivers completed the IDEAL- IC; physicians completed the original IDEAL-P and the Clinical Dementia Rating sum of boxes ( CDR- SB). Missing items and floor and ceiling effects were reviewed to assess feasibility. To test construct validity, a priori hypotheses were defined for expected correlations between IDEAL- IC, IDEAL-P, and CDR- SB scores. Results Seventy-three IDEAL- IC instruments were completed, 86% of which had no missing items. Three percent of all 730 individual items were missing. No floor or ceiling effects were detected. CDR scores were 0 7%, 0.5 in 33%, 1 in 27%, 2 in 10%, and unknown in 23%. IDEAL- IC scores correlated highly with IDEAL-P scores (correlation coefficient ( r) = 0.70) and with CDR- SB scores ( r = 0.65) as expected; the difference between these two correlations was smaller than expected. Agreement between IDEAL- IC and IDEAL-P scores was 34% within a range of 1 point difference on 36-point scales, 57% within a range of two points, and 81% within a range of five points. Correlation between IDEAL-P and CDR- SB was very high ( r = 0.85). Conclusion Results of this study indicate good feasibility and high validity of staging dementia by informal caregivers using the IDEAL- IC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]