Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living (Katz ADL)
What It Measures
The Katz Index is the original activities of daily living scale and remains one of the most widely used. It asks a simple question about each of six basic self-care functions: can this person do it without help?
Bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, continence, and feeding are each scored yes or no — one point for independence, none for dependence. A score of 6 means full function, 4 means moderate impairment, and 2 or less means severe impairment. Katz proposed that these functions are lost in a predictable order, with bathing and dressing typically going first and feeding last, which is what makes the index useful as a rough marker of where someone sits in a decline.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: The scale is reproduced without restriction across clinical resources
Learn More: Three limitations shape how the result should be read. The dichotomous yes/no scoring cannot distinguish a little assistance from a lot, so a person needing a steadying hand and a person needing full care both score 0. It covers only basic ADLs, not instrumental ones like cooking or managing money, which produces a ceiling effect in higher-functioning people. And Katz's proposed hierarchy of loss is debated. The index is most informative when a baseline taken while the person was well is compared with later measures.
