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
Every Check on Heyrafiki is a published, validated Instrument: a questionnaire developed by researchers, tested on thousands of people, and shown to be reliable (consistent across time) and valid (measuring what it claims). The Mood Check is the PHQ-9, the standard Depression Screening used in clinics worldwide. The Anxiety Check is the GAD-7. The Wellbeing Check is the World Health Organization's WHO-5. Every Check is built this way, and every citation is published on the page where you take it.
We keep the wording faithful to the published forms and score by the published rules, because a validated instrument is only valid as published. Change the questions and you are back to a quiz.
Safety outranks the score
- Crisis comes before results. If an answer suggests someone may be at risk of harm, verified crisis support appears immediately, before any score is computed.
- 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.
- Never tied to your name. A Check is a private conversation with yourself. Your answers are not attached to your identity, and your result is yours to share only if you choose to.
Why a five-minute Check matters at all
Screening is not treatment, and we will never pretend otherwise. What a good Screening does is turn 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.
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.
Every instrument and citation behind our Checks is listed openly on the Self-Assessments page.
