THE ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTIONAL AGE USING ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING PERFORMANCE TESTS - A STUDY OF KOREAN WOMEN

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which a battery of 24 activities of daily living (ADL) performance tasks could be used to determine functional age in a sample of older women. The subjects were 253 older adult Korean women, aged 60 to 91 years. All subjects completed a comprehensive battery of 24 performance tests related to common activities of daily living. Correlations between the measures were computed, and principal component analysis was applied to the 24 x 24 correlation matrix. A principal component score was computed for each subject and was found to decrease significantly with advancing age. Multiple regression analysis revealed that out of the initial 24 variables, 5 variables accounted for 81% of the variability. An equation was developed to determine ADL age; the equation was considered useful for the assessment of daily living activities of older adult Korean women.