WHO-5 Well-Being Index

WHO-5

psychologyhealth sciencesFree for research use

A 5-item self-report scale of subjective psychological well-being over the past two weeks; brief and widely used as a depression screen.

Items

Response format

6-point frequency scale (0-5)

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Well-being was measured with the WHO-5 Well-Being Index (Topp et al., 2015), a 5-item scale with good internal consistency (α ≈ .84); a raw score below 13 (or ≤50%) warrants screening for depression.

Citing this in a methods section? This scale spans more than one discipline, so the style depends on where you publish — see the APA 7 or Vancouver guides, or compare all six citation styles.

Reliability & validation

Validation population

Clinical and general adult samples (Topp et al., 2015)

Cronbach's α

0.84

Response anchors

At no time · Some of the time · Less than half of the time · More than half of the time · Most of the time · All of the time

Known limitations

Free to use with copyright acknowledgment (WHO). Very brief; a low score is a screen, not a diagnosis, and ceiling effects occur in generally healthy samples.

Original citation

Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S., Bech, P. (2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: A systematic review of the literature. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(3), 167-176.

https://doi.org/10.1159/000376585

Questions researchers ask

What does the WHO-5 measure?

A 5-item self-report scale of subjective psychological well-being over the past two weeks; brief and widely used as a depression screen.

How many items does the WHO-5 have?

The WHO-5 Well-Being Index (WHO-5) has 5 items.

Is the WHO-5 free to use?

The WHO-5 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the WHO-5 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.84. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the WHO-5, and how do I cite it?

Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S., Bech, P. (2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: A systematic review of the literature. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(3), 167-176. https://doi.org/10.1159/000376585

Reference only

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Library entry verified July 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.