the who5 wellbeing index: a validation study in people with infertility

Background: infertility is a public health problem and can lead to depressive symptoms. in recent years, the whofive wellbeing index (who5) has been used as a screening measure for depression, but study on psychometric properties in people with infertility is scarce. the objective of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the persian version of the who5 in people with infertility.methods: overall, 539 infertile patients from a referral infertility center in tehran, iran in the period between may and aug 2017, completed the who5, along with other psychological measures: the patient health questionnaire9 (phq9) and the hospital anxiety and depression scale (hads). construct validity and internal consistency of who5 were evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) and cronbach’s alpha, respectively. convergent validity was examined by relationship with phq9 and hads.results: the prevalence of poor wellbeing was 44.3% and that of depression was 18.6%. cfa confirmed the unidimensional factor structure of the who5. internal consistency of the who5 was good (cronbach’s alpha=0.858). the who5 significantly correlated with the phq9 (r=0.522), hadsanxiety (r=0.524) and hadsdepression (r=0.630), confirming convergent validity..conclusion: the who5 is a short and easy to use questionnaire with satisfactory reliability and validity that appears suitable for use as a screening test for depressive symptom in infertile people. in addition, the prevalence of depression and poor wellbeing was very high in this population.