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3.9 Standardized measures of psychosocial wellbeing
Four standard outcome measures of psychosocial well-being and quality of life
were included in the questionnaire, three from the Youth’07 and one from the
Youth2000. These included the following:
The World Health Organisation (Five) Wellbeing Index (WHO-5)
The Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale - short form (RADS2-SF)
The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
The Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children - short form (MASC-10)
3.9.1 The WHO-Five Well-being Index
Who-5 was derived from a larger rating scale (WHO-10) developed for a World
Health Organisation project in 1990 and is a measure of psychological wellbeing. It is a
5 item positively worded scale designed to assess the emotional wellbeing within the
previous 2 weeks, covering positive mood, vitality and general interest and scored on a
6-point Likert scale from 0 ( not present) to 5 (constantly present ) (Bech, 1999; Bech et
al., 2003). The raw score is calculated by totalling the figures of the five answers and
ranges from 0 to 25, 0 representing worst possible and 25 representing best possible.
The WHO-5 has been found to have a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.91,
( Lowe et al., 2004) A study to evaluate the psychometric properties of the WHO-5 in
adolescents with Type 1 diabetes (de Wit, Pouwer, Gemke, Delemare-van de Waal, &
Snoek, 2007) found good reliability and validity and concluded it was a suitable tool to
use with adolescents in measuring the emotional wellbeing, allowing for comparison
with healthy peers.