This page is part of the MII Implementation Guide PRO (v2027.0.0-ballot.1: 2027 Ballot 5) based on FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) R4. This is the current published version in its permanent home (it will always be available at this URL). For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

Whiteley-7

Clinical Context

The Whiteley-7 (WI-7) is a short form of the Whiteley Index for assessing health anxiety and somatisation. Fink et al. derived it in 1999 from the longer version: of the original items, the seven with the highest factor loadings were retained, the remainder discarded for loadings below 0.5.

Scoring and interpretation (sum score 0–7): seven binary items, each "yes" answer counting one point. The authors note that under the Rasch model the items may be treated as equivalent and therefore simply added up.

The original publication does not establish a single binding cut-off. Instead, Fink et al. report two exploratory cut-points (0/1 and 1/2) with differing trade-offs between sensitivity and specificity; both are documented in the ObservationDefinition.

The paper additionally describes two subscales (Illness Conviction, Illness Worrying), of which illness conviction performs better psychometrically. They are deliberately not implemented in the MII PRO module — only the total score is.

FHIR Implementation

Language strategy: English as the primary language (the original per Fink et al. 1999, Table I), German texts as translations from the PCOR-MII Item Level Dictionary.

Questionnaire

Canonical URL: https://www.medizininformatik-initiative.de/fhir/ext/modul-pro/Questionnaire/mii-qst-pro-wi-7

Capabilities: Displayable, Collectable, Calculatable, Extractable, Domain-aligned

Implementation notes:

• linkIds wi7-q01…wi7-q07, score item wi7-score-total.
• Answers via the shared RuleSet YesNoAnswerOptions with SNOMED CT 373067005/373066001 and ordinal weights 0/1 — the same scale as SCOFF and PC-PTSD.
• Score calculation via FHIRPath: %resource.item.where(linkId.matches('^wi7-q0[1-7]$')).answer.value.weight().sum().
• Neither LOINC nor SNOMED CT carries a code for the instrument itself (checked); coding is via the MII questionnaire catalogue.

The complete resource: Questionnaire definition.

Score Representation

1. Calculated item in the QuestionnaireResponse (linkId: wi7-score-total)
2. Observation carrying the MII score code wi-7-total
3. ObservationDefinition: mii-obsdef-pro-score-wi-7 — value range 0–7 {score}, higher = more pronounced health anxiety

Both cut-points are documented as qualifiedInterval, not shipped as executable interpretation logic (see Scoring).

License

Freely available. The original publication makes no explicit licence statement about the scale itself; the PCOR-MII DIZ implementation list records it as freely available.

Sources

• Fink P, Ewald H, Jensen J, Sørensen L, Engberg M, Holm M, Munk-Jørgensen P. Screening for somatization and hypochondriasis in primary care and neurological in-patients: a seven-item scale for hypochondriasis and somatization. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 1999;46(3):261–273. doi:10.1016/S0022-3999(98)00092-0
• Rief W, Hiller W, Geissner E, Fichter MM. Hypochondrie: Erfassung und erste klinische Ergebnisse. Zeitschrift für klinische Psychologie 1994;23(1):34–42. (German version of the longer Whiteley Index)