ABSTRACT
Functional status of the individual is an important behavioral dimension of health and illness status which reflects both the needs for service assistance and the outcomes resulting from service. This chapter focuses on the measurement of activities of daily living (ADL), a set of primary sociobiological functions. Developmental studies of the Index of ADL were subsequently extended to other chronically ill people, including those with cerebral infarction, multiple sclerosis, paraplegia, quadriplegia, rheumatoid arthritis, and a large number of unselected types of chronic conditions among institutionalized and noninstitutionalized people. The Index of ADL summarizes an individual’s overall performance in six functions, namely, bathing, dressing, toileting, transfer, continence, and feeding, organized as a scale of ordered profiles of levels of dependence in carrying out these functions. Bathing is the overall complex behavior of getting water and cleansing the whole body. Dressing is the overall complex behavior of getting clothes from closets and drawers and then getting dressed.
