Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Data for this study were first collected to contribute to a large-scale randomised trial of assessment and management of people aged 75 years and over in Britain, funded by the MRC, DoH and Scottish Office. Brief assessments were offered to all people of this age registered with 106 general practices within the 'General Practice Research Framework'. In half the practices all patients were then offered a detailed assessment (the 'universal arm' of the study). In the remaining practices, only patients whose answers on the brief assessment indicated particular need for a detailed assessment (the 'targeted arm') were offered one. The purposes of the trial were: to compare universal and targeted assessment with respect to mortality, institutionalisation, hospital admissions and quality of lifeto compare different methods of undertaking the brief assessment for response, completeness and costto compare management by the primary care team and by a geriatric evaluation management team with respect to these outcomesPeople in 23 of the practices were approached for quality of life information at baseline, then resurveyed 18 and 36 months later. The Economic and Research Council (ESRC) subsequently funded analyses of the data collected for the project 'Inequalities in Quality of Life among People Aged 75 Years and Over in the Community', which was part of the 'Growing Older' research programme. This project used baseline data from the trial only, and its purpose was to investigate differences in selected dimensions of quality of life of elderly people by their socio-economic circumstances in late and mid-life, and to identify features that account for socio-economic variations. The specific objectives of the ESRC project were to:investigate differentials in quality of life by socio-economic factors, gender and age among people aged 75 and over living in the communityidentify personal factors which contribute to differentials in quality of lifeinvestigate the interaction of personal and area measures of deprivation on quality of lifeexamine whether social class during mid-life is associated with quality of life in old ageinvestigate whether socio-economic circumstances experienced in old age modify any observed association with mid-life measuresFor the second edition (August 2006), the variable 'Fall', covering falls the respondent had during the six months prior to the survey, was added to the dataset.

Main Topics:

The dataset contains the raw and main derived variables used in the ESRC project. Cases include all those who were eligible for the main trial and had a baseline quality of life interview (includes data from the brief assessments). Five core quality of life measures are given in the data: four dimensions of the Sickness Impact Profile and the Philadelphia Geriatric Morale Scale. The following information extracted from geographical small area data has been added:'Carstairs' score and population density for the Enumeration District (ED) in which the respondent livesminimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation of Carstairs scores for adjacent EDs and for those in 1 km radiuspopulation density of the EDs within 5 kms of the respondents' ED (including that ED)Socio-economic indicators derive from the quality of life interviews. Standard Measures: The quality of life measures are standard: four dimensions from the UK version of the Sickness Impact Profile using weights from the Lambeth Disability Study and the Philadelphia Geriatric Morale Scale. References are as follows:Bergner M., Bobbitt R.A. and Pollard W.E. (1981) 'The Sickness Impact Profile: development and final revision of a health status measure', Medical Care, 19, pp.787-806Patrick, D.L. and Peach, H. (1978) Disablement in the community, Oxford: OUPLawton, M.P. (1975) 'The Philadelphia Geriatric Morale Scale: a revision', Journal of Gerontology, 30, pp.85-89Occupations were coded using the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (1990) Standard Occupation Classification, London: HMSO (SOC90).

Multi-stage stratified random sample

See documentation for details.

Face-to-face interview

Postal survey