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Patients rated interpretation services highly no matter how they were provided but experienced only the method employed at the time of the encounter. Providers and interpreters were exposed to all three methods, were more critical of remote methods, and preferred videoconferencing to the telephone as a remote method. The significantly shorter phone interviews raise questions about the prospects of miscommunication in telephonic interpretation, given the absence of a visual channel, but other factors might have affected time results. Since the patient population studied was Hispanic and predominantly female care must be taken in generalizing these results to other populations.

OBJECTIVES:To define racial similarities and differences in mobility among community-dwelling older adults and to identify predictors of mobility change. DESIGN:Prospective, observational, cohort study. PARTICIPANTS:Nine hundred and five community-dwelling older adults. MEASURES:Baseline in-home assessments were conducted to assess life-space mobility, sociodemographic variables, disease status, geriatric syndromes, neuropsychological factors, and health behaviors. Disease reports were verified by review of medications, physician questionnaires, or hospital discharge summaries. Telephone interviews defined follow-up life-space mobility at 18 months of follow-up. RESULTS:African Americans had lower baseline life-space (LS-C) than whites (mean 57.0 ± ± ± ± standard deviation [SD] 24.5 vs. 72.7 ± ± ± ± SD 22.6; P < .001). This disparity in mobility was accompanied by significant racial differences in socioeconomic and health status. After 18 months of follow-up, African Americans were less likely to show declines in LS-C than whites. Multivariate analyses showed racial differences in the relative importance and strength of the associations between predictors and LS-C change. Age and diabetes were significant predictors of LS-C decline for both African Americans and whites. Transportation difficulty, kidney disease, dementia, and Parkinson's disease were significant for African Americans, while low education, arthritis/gout, stroke, neuropathy, depression, and poor appetite were significant for whites. CONCLUSIONS:There are significant disparities in baseline mobility between older African Americans and whites, but declines were more likely in whites. Improving transportation access and diabetes care may be important targets for enhancing mobility and reducing racial disparities in mobility. 16 found that older African Americans were more likely than whites to show both improvement and decline in measures of physical performance; however, the limited number of African Americans in most prospective studies has made it difficult to assess racial differences in predictors of function. Prospective studies are needed to identify modifiable risk factors for functional loss and to understand the causes for disparities in function for older African Americans and whites. Such data are also needed to guide the development of interventions to eliminate racial differences. Life-space is a spatial measure of mobility describing the area through which a person moves over a specified time period. 6,7,[17][18][19][20] A life-space assessment incorporating where a person goes, the frequency of going there, and the need for assistance, can be used to define the full continuum and changes in mobility among community-dwelling older adults and provides a method to evaluate the impact of sociodemographic factors, diseases, geriatric syndromes, neuropsychological factors, and health behaviors on mobility change. We hypothesize that changes in life-space mobility precede adverse health outcomes such as nursing home placement and death (Fi...

Validity and reliability studies were conducted on the Face Scale, a very brief, pictorial scale of mood which uses a sequence of 20 faces and does not require reading literacy. Correlational and experimental evidence of the Face Scale's construct validity is presented, as well as its test-retest reliability. Recommendations are made for its use as a screening tool and for additional validity studies.