Seven questions about the last two weeks. The standard screening measure for generalised anxiety.
7 questions across 1 scale, about 2 minutes|Published scoring key from GAD-7, Generalised Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale, not invented
Authors: Spitzer, R. L., Williams, J. B. W., Kroenke, K. and colleagues, with an educational grant from Pfizer Inc.
Licence: No permission required to reproduce, translate, display or distribute
How often anxiety symptoms have bothered you over the past two weeks.
High. Anxiety has been a regular presence rather than an occasional one, and it has been showing up across several forms at once: worry, restlessness, irritability, a sense that something is coming.
Low. Anxiety symptoms have been infrequent over the last fortnight.
Question 1 of 7
Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by…
Feeling nervous, anxious or on edge
Before the GAD-7, screening for anxiety in a ten-minute appointment meant either a long instrument nobody had time for or a clinician's impression. Spitzer and colleagues published the seven-item version in 2006, validated against clinician interviews in a sample of around 2,700 primary care patients.
It was developed with an educational grant from Pfizer and released without restriction. The instrument itself carries the line: no permission required to reproduce, translate, display or distribute. That is unusual for a validated clinical instrument and it is why the GAD-7 turns up everywhere.
Its sibling is the PHQ-9 for depression, and the two are often given together, because anxiety and low mood overlap heavily without being the same thing.
7 answers
Each answer you give is a number on the published response scale.
One scale
Answers belonging to the same scale are added together.
A band
Each total is read against the bands printed for that scale.
Each of the seven items scores 0 for not at all, 1 for several days, 2 for more than half the days and 3 for nearly every day. The seven are summed for a total from 0 to 21. Nothing is reverse-keyed.
Scoring runs in your browser from your own answers. It is deterministic, so the same answers always produce the same result, and no part of it is generated, estimated or inferred.
The published cut-points are 5, 10 and 15 for mild, moderate and severe anxiety, with 10 as the usual threshold for further assessment. Those come from the validation study rather than from convention.
Screening instruments trade precision for speed on purpose. A raised score means further assessment is warranted, not that a condition is present; a low score does not rule one out.
Two weeks is a short window. The instrument is at its most useful repeated over time, where a trend says more than any single reading.
Worth taking if
Not the right tool for
A screening questionnaire, not a diagnosis. No score here identifies a disorder, and it was never designed to.
It covers two weeks. A difficult fortnight produces a raised score in somebody who is generally fine.
It was validated in primary care, where a clinician interprets the result alongside everything else they know about the person.
If your score is high and this is not news to you, the useful move is talking to someone rather than retaking the test.
This is a self-assessment questionnaire, not a diagnostic instrument and not medical advice.
7 questions, about 2 minutes. Your answers are scored on this device and stored on this device. There is no account to create and nothing is sent to a server. Progress saves as you go, so a long assessment can be finished across more than one sitting.
No sign up, ever. Every item in this assessment comes from GAD-7, Generalised Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale, and the page above tells you exactly how each score is worked out before you answer anything.
Scores of 0 to 4 are described as minimal, 5 to 9 as mild, 10 to 14 as moderate and 15 to 21 as severe. Ten is the point at which the instrument's authors suggest further assessment.
No. It means a clinician would normally want to look further. The GAD-7 is a screening tool: it is deliberately tuned to catch people who might benefit from assessment, which means it also flags people who turn out to be fine.
The GAD-7 asks how often specific anxiety symptoms appeared. The Perceived Stress Scale asks how uncontrollable and overloading your month felt. They measure different things and people frequently score high on one and low on the other.
Under two minutes. Seven statements, each rated for how many days in the last fortnight it bothered you.
Yes. The instrument itself states that no permission is required to reproduce, translate, display or distribute it. It was developed with an educational grant from Pfizer and released without restriction.
It is more useful repeated than taken once, because it covers a two-week window. Clinicians commonly use it to track change over months rather than to make a single judgement.
All seven items, the four response options and their 0 to 3 values were read from the official GAD-7 instrument PDF published at phqscreeners.com, which also carries the permission statement quoted above. Check the source.