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Nonpatient responses to five major adjustment scales were examined at three time-points, two weeks apart. There was no evidence for a systematic increase in adjustment scores due to completing the instruments. Internal consistency coefficients and test-retest stability coefficients for the five adjustment scales show them to have utility for assessing patient groups. Only the SCL-90 showed promise for allowing reliable assessment of individual change over time. All five scales significantly discriminate patient groups from groups of nonpatients. Further research is needed to clarify present results, to determine the clinical significance of various magnitude changes on the scales, and to develop more specific measures of adjustment and symptomatology.

We used findings from the Minnesota Senior Study to examine the theoretical and methodological difficulties of defining, coding, and analyzing data on older volunteers. This study, the first statewide survey of the needs and resources of the elderly in Minnesota in almost 20 years, found that over half (52%) of older Minnesotans do volunteer work for organizations--considerably higher than has been found in national surveys. Problems in definition and methodology, however, have confounded analyses. This paper proposes a new conceptual model for classifying volunteer roles, based on three dimensions: whether the voluntary service is "formal" or "informal"; whether the activity entails a regular or an occasional time commitment; and the nature of the service activity (person-to-community, person-to-object, or person-to-person).

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