This study uses a theoretical model of health services utilization to assess the effects of predisposing, enabling, and need-for-care characteristics on recency of eye examinations among a sample of 998 elderly African-American persons. More than 64% of participants reported that they had had eye examinations within the last 12 months. Multiple logistics regression analysis explains 13.3% of the variance of eye examinations. This data indicates that recency of eye examination is related to health locus of control, private insurance, Medicare, insulin-dependent diabetes, and presence of eye disease. No significant relationship between recency of eye examination and self-rated health status, social support, vision impairment, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes were detected. The lack of association between non-insulin-dependent diabetes and the recency of eye examination suggests that the amount of preventive care in place may not be adequate. This data shows that the unique contributions of need characteristics account for a major variance of recency of eye examination. However, enabling characteristics play a significant role in sending the participants of this study to eye-specialists, even after need-for-care factors are held constant.