Most people have a rough sense of how they’re doing. But “rough sense” is a poor tool for improvement. When you can actually measure your wellbeing — with a reliable score — you can track progress, identify which dimensions need the most work, and notice when things are getting better or worse before problems compound.
Here are five validated methods for measuring your wellbeing, from clinical tools to practical self-assessments.
1. The WHO-5 Wellbeing Index
The WHO-5 is the most widely used brief wellbeing measurement tool in the world. It was developed by the World Health Organisation and has been validated in over 30 languages. It takes about 90 seconds to complete.
The five questions ask how often in the past two weeks you have:
- Felt cheerful and in good spirits
- Felt calm and relaxed
- Felt active and vigorous
- Woken up feeling fresh and rested
- Felt your daily life has been filled with things that interest you
Each question is scored 0 to 5, giving a total out of 25. Multiply by 4 to get a score out of 100.
Interpreting your score:
- Above 70: Good wellbeing
- 50–70: Moderate wellbeing — consider what might be pulling the score down
- Below 50: Low wellbeing — the WHO recommends professional assessment at this level
- Below 28: Indicates likely depression — seek professional support
The WHO-5 is particularly good for tracking changes over time. Take it monthly and watch the trends.
2. The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS)
The WEMWBS was developed by researchers at the Universities of Warwick and Edinburgh. It’s a 14-item scale that measures mental wellbeing in a positive frame — focusing on flourishing rather than symptoms of illness. This makes it useful for people who want to measure progress even when they’re not in clinical distress.
Questions cover areas like feeling optimistic about the future, feeling useful, thinking clearly, and feeling good about oneself.
Scoring: Each item is scored 1–5. Total scores range from 14 to 70. Scores above 52 are associated with high mental wellbeing in UK population data.
The WEMWBS is widely used in UK public health research and is freely available. It’s more nuanced than the WHO-5 but takes slightly longer.
3. The PERMA Profiler
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of flourishing: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement. The PERMA Profiler questionnaire (developed at the University of Pennsylvania) measures how you’re doing across all five domains.
This tool is particularly useful because it shows where specifically your wellbeing is strong or weak, not just an overall score. You might score high on Achievement but low on Relationships — which tells you something actionable.
The full 23-question profiler takes about 5 minutes and is available free through the VIA Institute and Positive Psychology Center at Penn.
To learn more about the framework itself, see our guide on the PERMA model of wellbeing.
4. A Simple Daily Mood Tracker
For everyday monitoring — without formal assessments — a mood tracker is a practical alternative. At its simplest, this means rating your overall wellbeing on a 1–10 scale at the end of each day and noting a brief comment about what drove that score.
Over two to four weeks, patterns emerge: which days consistently score lower, whether sleep is correlated with next-day mood, whether specific social interactions lift or drain you.
Digital mood trackers (apps like Daylio or Bearable) automate the pattern-spotting. A paper journal works just as well. The key is consistency.
5. The Wellbeing Wheel
The Wellbeing Wheel is a visual self-assessment that asks you to rate satisfaction in each of several life domains (physical health, relationships, work, finances, personal growth, and so on) from 0 to 10, then maps those ratings onto a circular diagram.
This isn’t a clinically validated scale — it’s a reflective tool. But it’s highly effective at surfacing imbalances that numerical scales miss. A person might score 8/10 on physical health and 2/10 on relationships and immediately see the problem in a way that words alone don’t convey.
What to Do With Your Score
A low score isn’t a diagnosis — it’s a data point. Here’s how to use it:
- Identify the lowest-scoring dimension. Is it emotional, physical, social, occupational, or financial?
- Focus there first. Targeted improvement in one dimension often lifts others.
- Take the same assessment again in 4–6 weeks. Progress is motivating; stagnation tells you to change approach.
- If your WHO-5 score is below 50, consider speaking to your GP or a mental health professional. This isn’t about being broken — it’s about getting accurate help faster.
Measuring your wellbeing is the starting point. Our guides on the five dimensions of wellbeing and daily wellbeing habits will help you act on what you find.