For types and volume of services used, most existing
studies have either defined use of home care asthe use of individual services, examining the incidence
of use of each service separately (Stone, 1986),
or they have defined home care utilization as the use
of one or more of several health and social services,
simply computing the number of services used
(McAuley & Arling, 1984). These approaches have
offered limited information on the nature of home
care provided to frail older people and have left
unanswered the question of whether there are differences
in who is likely to receive a particular type of
service. Similarly, volume of service usually is defined
as the number of service hours with the volume
of different types of services simply added together
(Bass et al., 1992; Bass & Noelker, 1987). Thus, it is
not known whether service volume varies by the type
of service provided. Benjamin's review (1992) of the
research on home and community-based services
noted the following gap in the literature: