Family units (N = 541) of impaired elderly persons and caregivers were randomly assigned to a control group or one of five treatment groups eligible for a variety of respite or educational services. After 12 months of service eligibility, caregivers of elderly persons remaining in the community reported lower levels of subjective burden. Services appeared to delay nursing home placement among families with adult child caregivers, but encouraged placement by spouse caregivers.

The problem of assessing personality in terms of objective criteria has spurred psychologists to undertake extensive methodological investigations. Essentially objective criteria are those which satisfy the demands of reliability (consistency) and validity (being related to something besides the measures themselves). In this article the author examines many ramifications of the methodological problems involved in personality assessment.

Lung cancer today causes more deaths in the United States than any other malignancy. As in many diseases, socially disadvantaged people who develop lung cancer face greater mortality risks than the advantaged. This article examines relationships of selected social factors to treatment and survival in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. Patterns of treatment and survival within this relatively homogeneous subgroup of lung cancer patients raise issues pertinent to the current debate over health care delivery in the United States.Reports

Past research on the concept of burden has failed to place it in the larger context of social interaction and small group analysis. This failure to integrate the concept into a more general area of knowledge prevents researchers from viewing burden as a product of dyadic interaction that is best studied over time. This article moves the concept and measurement of burden into a more general system of variables, showing that the issues of burden relating to the elderly and the mentally impaired are special cases. A model that accommodates the crucial element of time is presented for the conceptualization of burden and the analysis of antecedents and consequences.

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