Standardised Assessment: A Comparison of the Community Dependency Index and the Barthel Index with an Elderly Hip Fracture Population

The Community Dependency Index (CDI) is a standardised outcome measure of independence in self-care activities, based upon the Barthel Index, for the assessment of disabled and elderly people living in the community. The operational definitions take account of the influence that the environment has on a person's ability to carry out activities of daily living.

This paper reports the results of a longitudinal study of two groups of community-dwelling elderly people who had sustained a hip fracture. The inter-rater reliability of the CDI was assessed, the agreement between the CDI and the Barthel Index was assessed and the sensitivity to change over time of the two measures was compared. The CDI was found to be equally as sensitive to a change in overall scores as the Barthel Index but tended to give lower scores. This trend has important implications for its use as an outcome measure of independence in activities of daily living following trauma.