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Well-being

Quality of Life.

The WHOQOL-BREF assessment from the World Health Organization, measuring quality of life across six dimensions: Overall Subjective Wellbeing, Health Satisfaction, Physical Health, Psychological Health, Social Relationships, and Environment.

Time
About 7 min
Questions
26
Measures 6 wellbeing facets

Instructions

This questionnaire asks how you feel about your quality of life, health, and other areas of your life. Please answer all questions based on your life in the last two weeks.

What to expect

Scientifically validated
Based on established psychological research
Private results
Your data is secure and private
Detailed results
Comprehensive insights and recommendations

About the WHO Quality of Life Test (WHOQOL)

Quality of life is how you perceive your position in life across the things that matter to you - your health, your state of mind, your relationships, and the conditions you live in. This self-assessment is based on the World Health Organization's WHOQOL-BREF, a widely used short measure developed through international collaboration to capture wellbeing in a way that holds up across cultures.

This is a reflective screening tool, not a clinical or diagnostic instrument. It does not detect, diagnose, or rule out any medical or mental health condition. Its purpose is to give you a structured, honest snapshot of how you have been experiencing different areas of your life over the past two weeks - a starting point for reflection, and, if your results concern you, for a conversation with a qualified professional.

The questionnaire has 26 items and takes about 7 minutes. You rate your satisfaction and experience across several life domains, and your results are summarized so you can see which areas feel strong for you right now and which feel more strained.

Items
26
Duration
About 7 min
Format
Satisfaction and experience ratings over the past two weeks
Free result
Free, right after the test: your strongest wellbeing domain and its band. The others are named and covered in the full report
Full report
A detailed report interpreting each domain, your overall pattern, and constructive directions for reflection (free with an account)

What it measures

The WHOQOL-BREF organizes wellbeing into four core domains - physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environment - alongside general items on overall quality of life and satisfaction with health. This test reports across those areas so you see a profile rather than a single number, because a person can feel strong physically while strained socially, or content with their relationships while their environment weighs on them.

Each domain reflects your own appraisal of that part of your life over the last two weeks. The result describes how you currently perceive your wellbeing; it is a self-report of subjective experience, which is exactly what the WHOQOL is designed to measure, and not an external or clinical verdict on your health.

  • Physical HealthEnergy, sleep, mobility, everyday activity, and freedom from pain or discomfort.
  • Psychological HealthMood, self-esteem, concentration, and how positively you feel about yourself and your life.
  • Social RelationshipsThe quality of your personal relationships and the support you feel you have around you.
  • EnvironmentYour sense of safety, financial security, living conditions, and access to information and services.
  • Overall Quality of LifeYour global appraisal of how good your life feels as a whole right now.
  • Health SatisfactionHow satisfied you are with your health at the present time.

The science and validity

The WHOQOL instruments were developed by the World Health Organization through a multi-country project specifically to allow quality of life to be assessed comparably across cultures and languages. The WHOQOL-BREF, a 26-item short form, was validated in international field trials and shows good internal consistency, sensible relationships among its domains, and the ability to discriminate between sick and well respondents - the properties expected of a sound measure of subjective wellbeing.

It is used worldwide in health research and routine care to track wellbeing and the impact of conditions and treatments over time. What it is not is a diagnostic test: it measures how you perceive your life, not the presence or absence of any disorder, and a low domain score signals an area worth attention, not an illness. Used here as an educational self-assessment, it is best treated as a mirror for reflection and, when results raise concern, a prompt to seek professional support.

References

  1. The WHOQOL Group (1995). The World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment (WHOQOL): Position paper from the World Health Organization. Social Science & Medicine, 41(10), 1403-1409.
  2. The WHOQOL Group (1998). Development of the World Health Organization WHOQOL-BREF quality of life assessment. Psychological Medicine, 28(3), 551-558.
  3. Skevington, S. M., Lotfy, M., & O'Connell, K. A. (2004). The World Health Organization's WHOQOL-BREF quality of life assessment: Psychometric properties and results of the international field trial. Quality of Life Research, 13(2), 299-310.

Read more about our standards: How our tests are built and validated.

Sample items

  • "How satisfied are you with the balance between rest and activity in your week?"Illustrative item in the WHOQOL response format (not from the scored questionnaire).
  • "How content are you with the closeness of your relationships?"Illustrative social-domain-style item.
  • "How much do your surroundings support the life you want to lead?"Illustrative environment-domain-style item.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a mental health diagnosis?

No. This is a reflective screening and self-assessment tool, not a diagnostic instrument. It does not detect, diagnose, or rule out depression, anxiety, or any other condition - it simply summarizes how you have been perceiving different areas of your life. If your results concern you, or you are struggling, please talk to a qualified health professional, and if you are in crisis, contact local emergency services or a crisis line.

Is this quality of life test free?

Yes. Taking the 26-item assessment is free, with no account required to start, and your free result shows your strongest wellbeing domain and its band, while the other domains are named and covered in the report. The full report, free with an account, adds your full profile across the domains, an in-depth interpretation of each, and your overall pattern.

What does the WHOQOL-BREF measure?

It measures your own perception of your quality of life over the past two weeks across four core domains - physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environment - plus general items on overall quality of life and satisfaction with health. It captures subjective wellbeing, meaning how you experience your life, rather than an external clinical assessment.

How accurate and validated is it?

The WHOQOL-BREF was developed by the World Health Organization and validated in international field trials, with good reliability and the ability to distinguish between people in better and worse health. It is widely used in research and clinical practice. That said, any short self-report reflects your current state and mood, so treat a single result as a snapshot rather than a fixed verdict.

Why does it ask about the last two weeks?

The WHOQOL-BREF deliberately anchors its questions to the previous two weeks so that answers reflect your recent, lived experience rather than a vague lifetime average. This makes the result more concrete and also more sensitive to change - retaking it later can show how your wellbeing has shifted.

What should I do with a low score?

Read it as information, not a label. A low domain score points to an area of your life that may be under strain and worth attention or support - it is not a diagnosis and not a measure of your worth. If a result worries you or a low area persists, discussing it with a doctor, therapist, or counselor is a sensible next step.

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