Lawton Instrumental ADL Scale (IADL)

The Lawton IADL Scale covers the harder half of daily living — the tasks that keep a person going in the community rather than just in their own body. Using a telephone, shopping, preparing food, keeping house, doing laundry, getting around town, managing medications, and handling money.

Each of the eight areas is rated by picking the description that best matches the person's highest level of functioning, then scored 0 or 1. Higher totals mean more independence. Its clinical value is timing: instrumental activities typically slip before basic self-care does, often by months or years, so difficulty managing medications or finances can be the first visible sign that something has changed.

Licensing Notes: The scale is reproduced widely in clinical resources without a posted fee.

Learn More: One scoring convention needs a decision before use. In the original 1969 scheme, women were scored on all eight items (0–8) and men on only five — telephone, shopping, transport, medications, finances — because food preparation, housekeeping, and laundry were assumed to be a wife's domain. Many modern applications score all eight for everyone. Whichever you use, state it, since a "5" means very different things under the two schemes. Lawton's original instruction was to exclude activities a person has never participated in, which is the more defensible way to handle the same problem.