The CARE interview revisited: development of an efficient, systematic clinical assessment.

This paper introduces a series on a method of systematically assessing the health and social problems of elderly adults, the Comprehensive Assessment and Referral Evaluation (CARE). AN overview is given of the conceptual approach and development of the CARE and its principle features including clinical relevance, semistructured format, criterion-based diagnosis, and psychometric properties as established on a probability sample of the elderly population. The reduction of the CARE is described, from a 1500-item instrument covering a wide range of problem areas and taking 90 minutes to administer, to shorter, more efficient and selective versions, the CORE-CARE and SHORT-CARE. The subsequent papers give details of the properties, reliability, validity, and reduction of the CARE.