All procedures were approved by the Research and Development Office at each
VAMC and their local Institutional Review Board. Participants were randomly selected
from the master list of primary care patients from the 1999 fiscal year at each of the
VAMCs. Stratifying on hospital, patient lists were generated and blocks of 200 eligible
patients were sent to each VAMC. Letters of invitation were mailed to eligible patients
to explain the study. Preselected patients were approached at the time of their next
primary care visit and invited to participate in the study procedures (74% participated).
Data collection was completed in two phases, with the second of which involved
an oversample of female Veterans (Grubaugh et al., 2006). Patients with diagnosed
dementia, octogenarians, and nonagenarians were excluded due to concerns regarding
their ability to recall study-relevant information.
All consenting participants completed a brief