The 'MOS Shortform General Health Survey', a measure for assessing general health, has been used in an elderly population in the Netherlands (N = 354). The 20-item (mail) questionnaire comprises six dimensions or subscales: physical functioning (6 items), role functioning (2), social functioning (1), mental health (5), health perceptions (5) and body pain (1). Our results show reasonable psychometric properties of the subscales (internal reliability, skewness and kurtosis of distribution, correlation between subscales and correlation with other health measures, 8 weeks test-retest reliability), which are comparable to those in the United States in a general patient population. The six subdimensions of the scale together seem to meet the criteria of the stochastic cumulative measurement model (Mokken-type scale). The results show that this instrument gives an opportunity to assess general health in the elderly within just a couple of minutes.