Catalytic reactions are commonly characterized by measuring reaction orders and apparent activation energies. In the present work, these macroscopic measurables are related to the degree of rate control (χ_i), which describes how the overall kinetics is influenced by the elementary reactions. The reaction orders are found to be χ_i-weighted sums over the microscopic rates, derived with respect to pressure. Similarly, the apparent activation energy is shown to be a sum over the individual reaction-energy-barriers, weighted by χ_i. The results couple macroscopic kinetics to the microscopic scale, which can facilitate analysis of catalytic reaction kinetics.