On January 1, 1978, a new Long Term Care Program was introduced in British Columbia. Five levels of care are offered, any one of which may be provided at home or in a facility. This paper presents data from a longitudinal study of Program clients (N = 3516) in two health unit areas, one urban, one semi-rural. The period of analysis is five years from admission. By the end of the five years, 40.2 percent of clients had died; 35.0 percent were still in the Program; 24.7 percent had been discharged alive and were still alive. This paper focuses on the decedents.

It was established that approximately half of the males and half of those aged 75 or over at admission were deceased within five years of admission. Regardless of level of care at admission, at least one-third had died in the five year period. More than one-third of decedents did not change level or location of service prior to death.

While these data may assist care providers in identifying high risk clients, probably the most provocative finding was the similarity in the proportion and pattern of deaths among new clients admitted to care at home and those admitted to facility.

An intervention trial with regular physical activity was carried out to test the hypothesis that walking speed is related to the level of cardiovascular fitness (maximal oxygen uptake). Earlier research has demonstrated that when VO2 max is held constant in a multiple regression analysis the association between walking speed and age (29–65 y) is eliminated. To describe the association between self-selected speeds of walking, and level of cardiovascular fitness, 63 men age 60 to 65 were studied before and after a 1 year program of exercise training. VO2 max was determined on a motor driven treadmill. A test of self-selected walking pace was administered over a 240 m indoor course. The men were asked to walk at 3 paces considered by the subjects to be rather slow, normal, and fast, respectively. They were randomly assigned with stratification for white and blue collar occupation to a program of exercise training (n = 33) or control (n = 27). The training program consisted of walking or jogging for 30 min three times per week for one year. After the training program the exercise group increased their VO2 max (9.5%) and their normal walking speed (1.29 to 1.43 m.s−1) significantly compared to the controls. A program of exercise endurance training will result in an increase in the speed of self-selected pace.

Previous research on multigenerational households in later life has generally ignored the distinction between multigenerational households located in the home of a parent and those located in the home of a child. This distinction has implications for dependency on the part of the older adult and also for social policy which is primarily concerned with the child-provided type of multigenerational household. The present analysis employs the distinction of parent's home versus child's home, and investigates multigenerational households in a random sample of adults in Hamilton, Ontario. In a qualitative analysis, the two types of multigenerational households are shown to be related to different family life course phases and to differ on a number of dimensions, including family size, age, effectual and consensual solidarity, income, marital status, and gender. The analysis indicates the need for future research on multigenerational households to explicitly differentiate between the two types of households examined in this paper.

Findings are presented on the psychometric properties of a short psychological hardiness measure using subjects predominantly aged over 60 years. The sample of 223 participants was administered the hardiness questionnaire and other instruments twice, with a one-year test-retest interval. First-order factor analysis yielded three factors termed challenge, control, and commitment. Second-order factor analysis revealed a single main factor of general hardiness on which all the first-order components loaded highly. Both internal consistency and test-retest forms of reliability were in the range 0.6 to 0.7. Concurrent validity was illustrated by significant correlations between hardiness and measures of happiness and adjustment.

This paper examines three conceptual and methodological problems characteristic of research on patterns of aging in rural versus urban environments. These are: lack of consistency and clarity in definitions of rurality and in the application of those definitions; inconsistency in the way in which rural-urban comparisons are made and representative communities selected; and problems arising from inattention to the issue of duration of residential experience. Our analyses show how these problems also characterize the emerging body of Canadian research on aging in rural environments.