DO ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING HAVE A HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE - AN ANALYSIS USING THE LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF AGING

Background. It has long been thought that individual activities of dai ly living (ADLs) can be combined to form a hierarchy or Guttman scale. The purpose of this study is to determine if ADLs fit into a single h ierarchical structure, and to examine how such a hierarchy should be e valuated. Methods. We use data from the baseline year of the Longitudi nal Study of Aging, a nationally representative survey of noninstituti onalized persons 70 years of age and older. For each of the 360 permut ations of the ADLs within the Katz hierarchy, we calculate the standar d measures of fit of ordered data to a Guttman scale: the coefficient of reproducibility, the minimum marginal reproducibility, the percenta ge improvement, and the coefficient scalability. Results. We find that although the Katz hierarchy does satisfy the traditional requirements for scalability, many other ADL hierarchies also satisfy these criter ia. Specifically, our analysis shows that there are 4 hierarchies at l east as good as the Katz hierarchy, and 103 hierarchies which satisfy the minimum standard for scalability. Conclusions. We conclude that th e typical scalogram methodology may not be sufficient to summarize dat a, and that a multiplicity of disability profiles may exist.