WHOQOL-BREF (World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment)

Clinical intent

WHOQOL-BREF is an implementation of the World Health Organization Quality of Life - Brief questionnaire. This is a shortened version of the WHOQOL-100, providing a comprehensive assessment of quality of life across four domains: physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environment.

The questionnaire consists of 26 questions assessing quality of life over the last four weeks.

Note: This implementation assumes that certain WHOQOL-BREF items that require reverse scoring (e.g., Q3, Q4, Q26) are already reversed in the questionnaire itself.

Clinical interpretation

Questions Q1 and Q2 (raw scores 1-5):

• 1 = Very poor quality of life / Very dissatisfied
• 5 = Very good quality of life / Very satisfied

Domain Scores (scale 0-100):

• 0 = Worst possible quality of life in this domain
• 100 = Best possible quality of life in this domain

Higher scores indicate better quality of life in the given domain. Each domain is assessed separately, providing a multidimensional profile of quality of life.

References

1. World Health Organization. (1998). WHOQOL User Manual. Programme on Mental Health. https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/4c5cd94a-599e-450f-9141-4a21a7b74849/content
2. World Health Organization. (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.
4. The WHOQOL Group. (1998). The World Health Organization quality of life assessment (WHOQOL): Development and general psychometric properties. Social Science & Medicine, 46(12), 1569-1585.