A hierarchical scale comprising 18 activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) items was tested on a sample of 101 noninstitutionalized people of 60 years and older in a northern part of the Netherlands. Three possible answers per item were used. The results confirmed the possibility of constructing a unidimensional, hierarchical, polychotomous scale for older people, measuring "functional problems on ADL-IADL." Moreover, the possibility of using two separate subscales (for ADL and IADL) was observed.

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Experiences with and attitudes toward carrier testing and prenatal diagnosis were evaluated among 549 potential and obligate carriers of hemophilia. Almost everybody considered carrier testing to be useful. Forty-nine percent had been tested for carriership, 10% had only received limited information, and 41% had not been tested and had never received information about the heredity of hemophilia. More married women, women with severe hemophilia in their family, and women closely related to a patient with hemophilia had been tested for carriership than others. Lack of information about the probability of carriership for female relatives and a similar ignorance of the possibility of carrier testing were important reasons for not having been tested. Eleven percent of the women with one or more children had undergone prenatal diagnosis in the past. Thirty-one percent of the study population would favour prenatal diagnosis with the implication of a potential abortion in early pregnancy and half of them would choose this option even in late pregnancy. Most of the women who objected to prenatal diagnosis did so because they did not consider hemophilia to be a sufficiently serious disorder to justify an abortion.

This study demonstrated clearly the fluctuating pattern of RA in the first years after onset. The patients' level of depressive feelings was linearly related to the level of functional ability. Like many other studies, also this study could not provide evidence for the stress buffering effect of social support.