title: A scale for the functional status of the elderly living at home.
abstract: Many scales have been developed to describe the functional status of geriatric patients. These scales are of limited use for describing the functional status of elderly people living at home, because of their poor capacity for differentiation. This article reports the results of a postal questionnaire among elderly people living at home. The findings will be analysed to see whether the inventory on performance of household and daily living activities describes the functional status of elderly people in a useful manner. A combined scale was constructed, which has satisfactory Guttman coefficients when applied to elderly people living at home. In addition, the scale is informative for those providing home care with regard to the elderly person's quantitative and qualitative needs for assistance. As such, it could be an instrument to be applied in community nursing. The applicability of the scale to institutionalized elderly people remains to be investigated.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Care Research, University of Limburg, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Frederiks
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: te Wierik
authors.forename: A P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Visser
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sturmans
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*