Activities of daily living is a fundamental concept and key metric used across healthcare, rehabilitation, and social sciences to assess an individual's functional status and level of independence. It represents the basic self-care tasks essential for autonomous living, such as bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, transferring, and continence. As a research concept, it investigates the capacity to perform these tasks, their determinants, and their relationship to health outcomes, care needs, and quality of life, providing a critical measure for evaluating interventions and planning support services.