Instrument reference
World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5)
Open licence with conditions Licence statement checked
- Construct measured
- Current subjective psychological well-being.
- Category
- Stress and well-being
- Intended population
- Adolescents and adults across many settings.
- Number of items
- 5 items (as the name indicates).
- Administration format
- Self-report; very brief.
- Scoring approach
- The WHO document states the raw score is the total of the five item ratings and is multiplied by four for a 0–100 percentage score. This catalogue does not reproduce items or scoring tables.
- Language and population validation
- WHO publishes multiple language versions; check validation for the intended Indian population.
Reliability and validity evidence
- A systematic review found the WHO-5 widely used with good clinimetric validity as a well-being measure and as a screen for depression in some settings. — Topp et al. (2015)
Interpretation cautions
- Low well-being is not a diagnosis.
- Non-commercial licence: commercial products may not embed it under this licence.
Copyright and licence
Open licence with conditions
© World Health Organization 2024. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO).
Published under a named licence (for example Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike). Uses must follow its conditions, such as non-commercial use and attribution.
Official source
WHO-5 (WHO PDF) (opens in a new tab)
Rights and evidence last verified: 2026-10-19.