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Before you begin

Answer 36 health-status questions using the time frame shown with each item. The result reports eight RAND domains on a 0–100 scale and keeps the one-year transition item separate.

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Score chart
Answer review
Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-15) Assessment Rate how much 15 physical symptoms bothered you over four weeks, then review the 0–30 PHQ-15 total and its symptom-burden band.
Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) Assessment Score the nine PHQ-9 symptoms, keep functional impact separate, and flag any Item 9 response for direct follow-up regardless of the total.
Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) Assessment Measure distress frequency over the past four weeks with K10, compare two published band guides, and review the complete response pattern.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) Assessment Score the GAD-7 for the last two weeks and compare anxiety symptom severity with the separate impact on work, home tasks, and relationships.

Health-related quality of life is broader than a diagnosis or a list of symptoms. It describes how health is experienced through movement, daily roles, pain, energy, emotions, social activity, and an overall sense of health. A profile can reveal that one part of daily functioning feels much more limited than another even when no single summary number captures that difference.

The RAND 36-Item Health Survey 1.0 is a self-report measure for adults. Its questions use several frames: current health, limitations in current activities, experiences during the past four weeks, current health beliefs, and one comparison with health a year ago. Keeping those frames separate is essential because “today,” “during four weeks,” and “compared with last year” answer different questions.

Health concept What the domain summarizes
Physical functioningLimitations in activities ranging from vigorous effort to bathing or dressing
Role limitations — physicalEffects of physical health on work or other regular activities
PainPain intensity and interference with normal work
General healthOverall health rating and beliefs about present or future health
Emotional well-beingPositive and negative emotional experiences
Role limitations — emotionalEffects of emotional problems on work or other regular activities
Social functioningInterference with normal social activities
Energy / fatigueFeeling energetic, worn out, or tired

Each domain is scored from 0 to 100 after its answers are recoded in a favorable-health direction. Higher physical-functioning scores mean fewer reported activity limitations; higher pain scores mean a more favorable pain state, not more pain. The same “higher is more favorable” rule applies to all eight domains, which makes their positions easier to compare without making them interchangeable.

Item 2, the one-year health-change question, stays outside the eight-domain profile. A person can report improvement from last year while still having low current functioning, or report decline while retaining relatively strong current scores. Change and current status should therefore be read together but not averaged as if they measured the same thing.

The survey describes self-reported health status. It does not diagnose illness, determine urgency, establish disability or eligibility, or supply a universal “good” score. Meaningful interpretation depends on the domain pattern, real-life context, consistent administration, and an appropriate comparison group when norms are used.

How to Use This Tool:

Answer each item in its stated time frame; the survey moves between current limitations, the past four weeks, health beliefs, and one-year change.

  1. Choose Start assessment and read the context line above each question before selecting a response.
  2. Complete all 36 items. Use the wording shown for each response scale rather than assuming that the first or last option always carries the highest score.
  3. Select Finish assessment, then compare the eight entries in the Domain function ladder. Treat the separate health-transition response as a one-year change note.
  4. Check Answer review if a domain looks surprising. The optional review order changes only the completed ledger, so use Edit answers to correct an actual response.

Interpreting Results:

Read the eight domain scores before the summary means. All domains run from 0 to 100 and higher is more favorable, but a 20-point difference across domains is descriptive rather than a clinical threshold. No diagnostic bands or pass/fail boundaries are applied.

The Physical-side profile mean, Mental-side profile mean, and Eight-domain profile mean give each included domain equal weight. They are transparent within-page comparison aids, not official RAND composite scores, standardized norm scores, or substitutes for the eight-domain profile.

  • Look first for the lowest domain and connect it to concrete daily examples.
  • For repeat checks, compare the same domains under similar circumstances and with the same recall frames.
  • Keep the one-year Health transition item separate from current-health scores.

Small changes can reflect ordinary variation, context, or a different understanding of the questions. A concerning symptom or functional loss deserves appropriate health review even when an overall mean appears high.

Technical Details:

RAND scoring has two stages. Each raw response category is first mapped to a value from 0 to 100, with direction adjusted so that 100 always represents the more favorable health state. The recoded values belonging to each health concept are then averaged.

Transformation Core

Items Raw response order mapped to 0–100 values
1, 2, 20, 22, 34, 361→100, 2→75, 3→50, 4→25, 5→0
3–121→0, 2→50, 3→100
13–191→0, 2→100
21, 23, 26, 27, 301→100, 2→80, 3→60, 4→40, 5→20, 6→0
24, 25, 28, 29, 311→0, 2→20, 3→40, 4→60, 5→80, 6→100
32, 33, 351→0, 2→25, 3→50, 4→75, 5→100

Opposite raw directions are intentional. For example, item 20 maps “Not at all” social interference to 100, while item 32 maps “None of the time” interference to 100 even though that response is the fifth category. Recoding puts both answers on the same favorable-health direction before they are averaged.

Formula Core

For a domain k containing nk recoded items, its score Dk is the arithmetic mean of those item values:

Dk = 1 nk ∑ i=1 nk ri

Here, ri is an item after 0-to-100 recoding. This page requires a complete 36-item response set and does not calculate partial domains. The published RAND method can average answered items when data are missing, so results from systems that permit missing responses may not be directly comparable.

Domain Items Item numbers
Physical functioning103–12
Role limitations — physical413–16
Pain221, 22
General health51, 33–36
Emotional well-being524, 25, 26, 28, 30
Role limitations — emotional317–19
Social functioning220, 32
Energy / fatigue423, 27, 29, 31

Comparison Means

The three summary aids average completed domain scores, not all items directly. This prevents a 10-item domain from automatically outweighing a two-item domain.

P=PF+RP+BP+GH4 M=EW+RE+SF+EF4 O=∑k=18Dk8

P is the physical-side mean, M is the mental-side mean, and O is the eight-domain mean. These values are displayed to one decimal place and are not RAND physical or mental component summary scores. Item 2 remains a separate 0-to-100 health-transition value.

Comparability and Privacy:

Fair repeat comparison requires the same questionnaire version, scoring method, recall frames, and completion rule. Cultural setting, language, health events, and response context can also change how scores should be understood.

  • No clinical cutoffs, population percentiles, or minimally important change thresholds are applied.
  • Answers remain in the current browser tab and clear on reload or restart.
  • A copied link is created only after confirmation and embeds all 36 raw responses in an encoded URL fragment.
  • Encoding is not encryption. Anyone with the link may recover the health responses, so treat it as sensitive.

References: