The risk of future disability indicated
by the prevalent hierarchy was evaluated from a model that uses a profile of impairment in
activities of daily living to predict future disability in the remaining activities. Although a
model was devel oped for each activity, we illustrate the results using the model for
incident feeding disability within 2 years, adjusted for age, gender, and a profile of disabilities in activities of daily living. There were 3970, 3002, and 2294 pairs of observations
from 2-year intervals beginning with 1984, 1986, and 1988, respectively, used to estimate the
discrete hazard rate of feeding disability. Gender was found not to be a significant predictor, and
the model was refitted omitting gender. The final fitted discrete hazard function has the
form
log(-log( l - DHk+ 1 )
= -3.7 + .05 (Age