Components of burden: interventive implications.

A study of 127 informal caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients in Florida's Tampa Bay area was undertaken to determine the correlates of the five components of burden, as measured by the Cost of Care Index, a multidimensional measure of caregiving burden. Significant relationships between predictor variables and burden components suggest that global scores and measures of burden do not identify specific problem areas relative to the various components of burden.

An evaluation of the reliability and validity of the Functional Assessment Inventory.

The reliability of the Functional Assessment Inventory (FAI) was evaluated using a sample of VA domiciliary and nursing home patients. The interobserver and interrater reliability coefficients of the summary rating scales, based on a single assessment, tended to be higher than their test-retest reliability coefficients, based on two independent assessments separated by a modal four-week interval. Validity coefficients, using the OARS instrument ratings as criteria, also based on two independent assessments several weeks apart, were, on the average, as high as the test-retest reliability coefficients. More specifically, the mental health, physical health, and activities of daily living rating scales, along with the objectively scored Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire and Short Psychiatric Evaluation Schedule, tended to yield relatively similar scores with repeated measurement, while the social resources and economic resources scales were somewhat less stable, a discrepancy possibly explained by the homogeneous nature of the social and economic status of most of the patients (institutionalized veterans). Thus the reliability and validity of the FAI are satisfactory, but the stability of some of its scales requires further investigation.

Professional and public conceptions of alcoholism.

Law enforcement officers, college students and the general public were far less likely to endorse medical conceptions of deviant drinking than were staff members of a detoxication center.

National health insurance policy in the United States: a case of non-decision-making.

Despite the vast range of commentaries and research on the current health care crisis, little research attention has been focused specifically on the lack of federal response to this crisis. As a way of focusing analysis on the specifics of Congressional inaction, it is suggested that both the range of health care proposals and the current debates in Congress may be seen as part of an ongoing bargaining process over legitimate alternatives for modication of health care delivery. It is argued that the lack of any new health care legislation may be seen as the result of a series of non-decision by conservative Congressional representatives of the dominant medical interest groups. These non-decisions have successfully excluded any challenges to those interests by reliance upon a predominant "mobilization of bias" to effectively define and/or divert these challenges as illegitimate attempts at change. The changes which eventually evolve from Congressional compromise may represent a modification of the prevailing bias concerning legitimate alternatives, but are unlikely to modify the relation of the controlling interests involved.

Neighborhood reactions to a community-based treatment center for alcoholics.

Survey data from residents of a neighborhood located near a controversial community-based treatment center for alcoholics were compared with data from a similar neighborhood with no treatment facility. The results suggest that neighborhood opposition to such facilities may not be as intense as is commonly thought.