The quiz problem
An online quiz can ask anything and score it however it likes. Nobody checks whether its questions measure what they claim, whether its cutoffs mean anything, or whether the same person taking it twice gets the same answer. That is harmless for entertainment quizzes. It stops being harmless when the person taking it is asking, "Am I depressed?"
The bar we hold
Each Heyrafiki Check names its published Instrument, scoring method, evidence source and interpretation. The Mood Check uses the PHQ-9, the Anxiety Check uses the GAD-7 and the Wellbeing Check uses the World Health Organization's WHO-5. Every Instrument keeps its own population, language, licensing and interpretation boundaries rather than borrowing a blanket claim from the others.
Question wording, response options and scoring follow the published form used for that Check. A change in wording, language or scoring changes the evidence that supports the result, so versions stay explicit.
Safety outranks the score
- Crisis comes before results. Where an Instrument contains a safety item, a concerning answer opens verified crisis support before the results screen.
- A Screening, not a Diagnosis. Every result says where you stand and what a reasonable next step looks like. Only a qualified Practitioner can diagnose, and every Check says so, every time.
- A private public Check. On the public Self-Assessment page, scoring happens on your device and the answers are not attached to an account. If a future clinical workflow records a result, that requires an explicit Consent path.
Why a five-minute Check matters at all
A good Screening turns a shapeless worry, "is something wrong with me?", into a number, a range and a next step. For many People, that is what makes the first conversation possible. Treatment and Diagnosis remain with a qualified Practitioner.
The approach is consistent: use the same Instruments a good Clinician would reach for, hold the line on what a Screening can and cannot say, and always point to a concrete next step.
The source citation, scoring method and interpretation appear with each Check. Clinical interpretation belongs to a qualified Practitioner, and every result points back to that human decision.
