New WHO-5 wellbeing survey for Southern Lakes communities

Kia ora koutou katoa,

Can you spare 1 minute (literally!) to fill in a wellbeing survey for the Te Hau Toka Southern Lakes Wellbeing Group?  Actually, it’s for you, too! Just complete the 5 simple wellbeing questions and you’ll get immediate feedback on how you score based on how you’ve felt over the last 2 weeks.

Dates: Opens 1 December, closes 5pm on 24 December 2021

Who’s it for? All Southern Lakes residents (Queenstown Lakes, Central Otago and Fiordland) aged 9 years and over

What happens next?  Once completed, you’ll get immediate feedback about how you scored as well as some wellbeing resources.

Click on this link to start the survey.

Make it part of a family/friend/workplace wellbeing check-in

To help us reach as many people as possible, we’d love it if you could use the survey as part of your wellbeing check-in with family, friends and colleagues.  For example, you could ask your colleagues to take a minute to fill it out in a meeting, to do it before an exercise class, or fill it in as a family at dinnertime.  You could even share it amongst your friends, both in-person and online from our Facebook posts.

Background
Te Hau Toka has worked with the Southern DHB’s public health unit, Public Health South, to develop a quarterly WHO-5 ‘mood check’ survey which will help us measure the ongoing wellbeing of our Southern Lakes communities. 

It’s based on the five-item World Health Organisation WellBeing Index (WHO-5), an internationally recognised, widely used tool for assessing mental wellbeing.

The results of the quarterly survey aim to help communities and support services across the region (Queenstown Lakes, Central Otago and Fiordland) better understand how people are feeling right now and whether current initiatives are having a positive impact on mental wellbeing. 

As an example, the health sector may use this information to help plan their local services.  Public Health South is also keen to learn whether this type of crowd-sourced information can be used to develop a wider Wellbeing Index for the wider region like Canterbury has done since the 2011 earthquakes.

The survey launched on 1 December 2021 will be run quarterly in December, March, June and September.  It’s completely anonymous and all data will be collated and held securely by Public Health South. PHS will work with Te Hau Toka to study the findings and publish a quarterly report.

What is WHO-5?
The WHO-5 has a long and successful history of being used across a wide range of study fields and has been clinically and psychometrically validated.  It’s translated into more than 30 languages and it has been used in research studies all over the world.

The WHO-5 can be applied to assess wellbeing over time or to compare wellbeing between groups. In New Zealand, it was used extensively by CDHB Community and Public Health from 2012 (following the Christchurch earthquakes) as a component scale of the Canterbury Wellbeing Index.

The questionnaire is scored out of a total of 25, with 0 being the lowest level of emotional wellbeing and 25 being the highest level of emotional wellbeing.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Ngā mihi,
Te Hau Toka Southern Wellbeing Group