Study title

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...