A sample of 334 people aged 56 and over living in the Capital Regional District of B. C. (Greater Victoria) were interviewed about their supportive social network. Four social supportive roles were investigated: caretaker, helper, confidant, and advisor.

Most of the sample had network members to fulfil these roles, however, in the lives of about one-fifth of the respondents, support in one or more of these areas was not available. Although most of the respondents in excellent or good health felt no need for more people in certain supportive roles, more people with fair or poor health expressed a need for more people in their supportive networks.

This research supports earlier findings about the vulnerability of women who are widowed and over 74 years old. They are the group most in need of socially supportive networks.

Sixteen healthy community residing elderly adults and 16 university students completed the Locomotor Maze test of extrapersonal orientation. They were given maps with nine location dots in a 3 × 3 matrix that corresponded to nine red discs on the floor of the experimental room. Participants were asked to walk the path outlined on each map without turning the map. Six maps were presented with paths increasing one segment in length with each subsequent map. The older adults committed more errors on the longer maps and took more time to make direction choices than young people. Because participants were free to consult the map throughout each trial, reliance on memory for landmaks and routes that characterizes earlier research was eliminated. It is suggested that the decreased performance shown by elderly adults on this task may be due to difficulty with working memory and mental rotation or increased field dependence.

This paper presents a French adaptation of the Metamemory in Adulthood (MIA) instrument. The purpose of the study was to assess the psychometric qualities of the French version and to test its validity by replicating age and sex differences in a large sample of French speaking adults. The MIA was administered to 120 males and 185 females, aged between 18 and 95. The initial factor structure of the MIA was replicated and the eight metamemory dimensions were identified, although there was some overlap between the dimensions. The internal consistency of the scales was assessed by computing Cronbach's alpha coefficients; seven of the eight scales were found to be reliable. The intercorrelations between the dimensions were also examined and revealed that each scale is tapping a specific aspect of metamemory. Finally, the analyses of variance confirmed the existence of significant age differences on five scales of the MIA and sex differences on three dimensions.

This paper focuses on ways that adult children and children-in-law mediate contact between grandmothers and grandchildren, following marriage breakdown and remarriage in the middle generation. A qualitative analysis of face-to-face contact between 110 grandmother-grandchild pairs was conducted. Findings showed that adult children have a more direct influence on visiting, by arranging or obstructing visits between grandmothers and grandchildren. The influence of first or second children-in-law was found to be more indirect. By preventing an estranged spouse from seeing his or her child, custodial children-in-law could also be preventing a grandmother's access to her grandchild, if she depended on her noncustodial child to bring the grandchild to see her when he or she exercised visiting rights. Children-in-law could also act as intermediaries through their absence as well as through their presence. These findings, as well as ways that grandparents can negotiate relationships with adult children and children-in-law, are discussed. Especially noted is the value of monitoring communication exchanges, maintaining friendly relationships with children-in-law and step-grandchildren, and acting as resources to the family.

Patient falls are a serious problem, contributing to the morbidity and mortality of the elderly patient. This study reports on the development of the Morse Fall Scale. The scale consists of six scored items and discriminant analysis correctly classifies 80.5% of the patients. Validation of the scale by computer modeling was conducted. Data were randomly split and that analysis procedure repeated. Variables were obtained and weighted using half of these data, and these weights were tested on the remaining data. Similar results were obtained. Sensitivity of the scale was 78% and the positive predictive value, 10.3%. Conversely, specificity was 83% and the negative predictive value, 99.3%. Interrater reliability scores were r=.96. A prospective study in three clinical areas showed that the scale is sensitive to different patient conditions and to length of stay. Thus, the scale permits identification of the patient at risk of falling so that prevention strategies may be targeted to those individuals.