This article describes short form versions of the Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (IIQ) and the Urogenital Distress Inventory (UDI). These instruments assess life impact and symptom distress, respectively, of urinary incontinence and related conditions for women. All subsets regression analysis was used to find item subsets that best approximated scores of the long form versions. The approach succeeded in reducing the 30-item IIQ and the 19-item UDI to 7- and 6-item short forms, respectively. The short form versions may be more useful than the long form versions in many clinical and research applications.

EMENTIA IS AN AGE-ASSOCIated illness that imposes severe functional impairment on individuals. In 2000, more than 4 million people in the United States had Alzheimer disease (AD), and that number is expected to increase to 13 million by 2050. 1 Milder cognitive impairment affects between one fifth and one third of older adults 2 and strongly predicts dementia and subsequent institutionalization. 3 Casecontrol studies, 4,5 cross-sectional studies, 6 and prospective studies [7][8][9] have reported an association between lower risk of dementia and postmenopausal estrogen supplementation. Metaanalyses of the potential protective ef-fects of estrogen against dementia have reported risk reductions of 29% 10 and 34%. 11 However, prospective observational studies have not found a protective effect of estrogen on either cogni-Author Affiliations, Financial Disclosures, and a List of the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study Investigators appear at the end of this article.

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We define social support as “an exchange of resources between two individuals perceived by the provider or the recipient to be intended to enhance the well‐being of the recipient.” We then discuss the assumptions and implications of this definition and address several gaps in the support literature. Specifically, we consider the costs and benefits of supportive exchanges for both participants, the dual and possibly incongruent perceptions of support held by the provider and the recipient, and the importance of non‐network sources of support. In addition, we distinguish between the health‐sustaining versus health‐compensating functions of support and how these functions link with the resources provided in supportive exchanges. We next address the factors that can influence support effects and suggest a broad range of outcomes for both the provider and the recipient. Finally, we distinguish the dimensions of support from the contextual variables that can influence its quality and effectiveness.

Urinary incontinence (UI) is a relatively common condition in middle-aged and older women. Traditional measures of symptoms do not adequately capture the impact that UI has on individuals' lives. Further, severe morbidity and mortality are not associated with this condition. Rather, UI's impact is primarily on the health status and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of women. Generic measures of HRQOL inadequately address the impact of the condition on the day-to-day lives of women with UI. The current paper presents data on two new condition-specific instruments designed to assess the HRQOL of UI in women: the Urogenital Distress Inventory (UDI) and the Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (IIQ). Used in conjunction with one another, these two measures provide detailed information on how UI affects the lives of women. The measures provide data on the more traditional view of HRQOL by assessing the impact of UI on various activities, roles and emotional states (IIQ), as well as data on the less traditional but critical issue of the degree to which symptoms associated with UI are troubling to women (UDI). Data on the reliability, validity and sensitivity to change of these measures demonstrate that they are psychometrically strong. Further, they have been developed for simple, self-administration.

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GE-ASSOCIATED MEMORY impairment affects an estimated one fifth to one third of older individuals and has important individual, family, and societal costs. 1,2 In older postmenopausal women, the potential impact of declining levels of sex hormones on cognitive functioning has received particular attention because of estrogen's presumptive beneficial effects on neurotransmitters, 3 neuroconnectivity, 4,5 and neuroprotection. 6 Observational studies have suggested that long-term hormone therapy may attenuate cognitive aging in postmenopausal women, although ran-domized clinical trial results are inconsistent. 7-12 The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) includes 2 randomized trials of post-menopausal hormone therapy: the estrogen-alone trial of conjugated equine estrogen (CEE) therapy in women with a prior hysterectomy and the estrogen Author Affiliations and Financial Disclosures are listed at the end of this article.