The Karnofsky Performance Status appears to be the most widely used scale for objective assessment of medical patients' quality of life. Evidence for its reliability and validity is reviewed and new data presented. Tests of inter-rater reliability, concurrent validity, and discriminant validity indicate that, with standardized observational procedures based on a mental status exam, the Karnofsky scale is acceptably reliable and valid as a global measure but it does not adequately capture the conceptual domain of quality of life.

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Our age is trying in many ways to deal with the problem of the survival of ethnic minorities. Being confronted with a centralized political power which destroys cultural differences, many of these minorities have become conscious of their originality (which is often hidden away in folklore) and are in search of a new balance with the dominant culture. They try to achieve this new balance by bringing their basic characteristics up to date or even deliberately entering a phase of counter acculturation and adopting an attitude of political liberation much like that of the formerly colonized peoples.

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