3. What proportion of the variability in survival can be

explained by a set of psychosocial variables?

 4. What proportion of the variability in survival can

be explained by a set of psychosocial variables and co-

morbidity?

 Three additional research questions were formulated

during the course of the patient interviews. These dealt

with the relationship between three disease variables and

certain psychosocial variables being studied. In this

instance, the disease variables were treated as the

independent variables. Psychosocial variables, which had

been independent variables, were treated as the dependent

variables.

 The first of these three questions dealt with the

correlation between co-morbidity and psychosocial variables.

The second and third questions focused on variables defined

as a result of the observations made during the interviews.

The questions were as follows:

 5. How are psychosocial variables related to co-

morbidity?

 6. How are psychosocial variables related to the

duration of illness from cancer?

 7. How are psychosocial variables related to the

individual's closeness to death?

 Six null hypotheses were tested in this investigation.

They were stated in the following manner: