Work and Social Adjustment Scale

The Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) is a validated, 5-item self-report instrument designed to measure functional impairment in adults experiencing…

Questions: 5
Duration: 2 min
Original title: Work And Social Adjustment Scale
Adaptation: Work and Social Adjustment Scale
Authors: Mundt, J. C., Marks, I. M., Shear, M. K., & Greist, J. H.
Created: 2002

The Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) is a validated, 5-item self-report instrument designed to measure functional impairment in adults experiencing mental health difficulties. Rather than counting psychological symptoms, the WSAS focuses entirely on how a patient's condition disrupts their day-to-day life. This specific focus makes it a highly valuable transdiagnostic tool to explore problems in patients presenting with depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, and trauma.

By capturing the lived impact of psychological distress across key domains, including employment, household responsibilities, and social connections, the scale provides clinicians with a clear picture of disease burden. It is highly sensitive to change over time, allowing practitioners to track functional recovery alongside symptom reduction. Repeated use of this measure helps ground clinical decision-making, ensures that progress translates into meaningful improvements, and supports therapeutic efforts to set SMART goals for the patient's daily functioning.

Example result

Fictitious result, computed from a sample set of answers.

Overall score

10/ 40

The Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) is a 5-item self-report questionnaire that measures the degree of functional impairment perceived by an individual due to a specific health condition (often psychological). It evaluates the impact on work, home management, social leisure activities, private leisure activities, and close relationships.

0–9

Subclinical

10–20

Significant functional impairment

21–40

Moderately severe or worse psychopathology

Intermediate band from Mundt et al. (2002): significant functional impairment with less severe clinical symptomatology.

cliniquemixed · condition: depression (main diagnosis), psychiatric outpatients · single main diagnosis subsample · Norway · n = 249 · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 24.26 ± 7.25

cliniquemixed · condition: anxiety disorders (main diagnosis), psychiatric outpatients · single main diagnosis subsample · Norway · n = 130 · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 20.89 ± 7.34

cliniquemixed · condition: PTSD (main diagnosis), psychiatric outpatients · single main diagnosis subsample · Norway · n = 107 · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 22.02 ± 7.69

cliniquemixed · condition: ADHD (main diagnosis), psychiatric outpatients · single main diagnosis subsample · Norway · n = 221 · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 19.23 ± 8.42

cliniquemixed · condition: bipolar disorder (main diagnosis), psychiatric outpatients · single main diagnosis subsample · Norway · n = 51 · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 22.51 ± 8.51

cliniquemixed · condition: personality disorders (main diagnosis), psychiatric outpatients · single main diagnosis subsample · Norway · n = 90 · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 24.08 ± 7.9

cliniquemixed · condition: psychiatric outpatients (routine care) · on 100% sick leave · Norway · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 23.14 ± 7.98

cliniquemixed · condition: psychiatric outpatients (routine care) · in work · Norway · Lundqvist et al. (2024)

040

M = 20.47 ± 8.29

Scoring

Sum, total score from 0 to 40, each item is rated on a 9-point scale (from 0 to 8).

Have your patient take this test

Assign it in one click: your patient answers on their phone, you receive the score and its interpretation.

Assign this test to a patient

What the test measures

The WSAS quantifies the degree to which a mental health problem interferes with five distinct life areas of daily functioning:

Work: The ability to perform occupational or educational duties.
Home management: Managing practical household tasks such as cleaning, shopping, and paying bills.
Social leisure: Participating in shared activities, outings, and social gatherings.
Private leisure: Engaging in solitary hobbies, reading, or personal interests.
Relationships: The capacity to establish and maintain close, supportive connections with family and others.

This scale is intended for adult patients presenting with any mental health condition to evaluate global functional impairment.

When and why to use it

Clinicians typically administer the WSAS to monitor functional outcomes and ensure that symptom reduction translates into real-world improvement.

Intake baseline: To evaluate the initial burden of disease during longitudinal case formulation and identify the most severely disrupted domains.
Monitoring change: To track functional recovery across sessions as patients replace avoidance with adaptive coping strategies.
Treatment planning: To pinpoint specific areas of disability that require targeted interventions, such as addressing entrenched automatic behaviors.
Return-to-work assessment: To provide an objective measure of occupational and social capacity when discussing occupational health or social support needs.

A validated WSAS score offers a reliable metric of functional disability, complementing the clinician's impression and confirming whether therapeutic gains successfully map onto the patient's medium and long-term goals.

Clinical library

750+ clinical tools

A library built with and for clinicians, ready to use in session and extend between appointments.

Access all the tools

Several resource types

Psychoeducation handouts

Understand at a glance

Interactive exercises

To do and fill in

Interactive programs

A structured path

Audios

Meditation and relaxation

Psychometric tests

Automatic scoring

The questions

'0' means 'not at all impaired' and '8' means very severely impaired to the point I can't work. If you are retired or choose not to have a job for reasons unrelated to your problem, do not answer this question.
1. Because of my problem, my ability to work is impaired.
This item assesses the extent to which the patient's condition interferes with their occupational or academic responsibilities.
- 0 - Not at all
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8 - Very severely
Personal problems can sometimes affect your ability to carry out certain tasks of daily life. To evaluate your difficulties, please read each section and indicate on the scale the extent to which your problem impairs your ability to carry out the activity in question.
2. Because of my problem, my home management (cleaning, tidying, shopping, cooking, looking after the home or children, paying bills) is impaired.
This item probes the impact of the problem on the patient's capacity to handle everyday household chores and administrative tasks.
- 0 - Not at all
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8 - Very severely
3. Because of my problem, my social leisure activities (with other people, e.g., parties, outings, clubs, visits, dating, having people over) are impaired.
This item evaluates how much the condition restricts the patient's engagement in shared recreational and social events.
- 0 - Not at all
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8 - Very severely
4. Because of my problem, my private leisure activities (done alone, such as reading, gardening, collecting, sewing, walking) are impaired.
This item measures the degree to which the problem disrupts solitary hobbies and personal restorative activities.
- 0 - Not at all
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8 - Very severely
5. Because of my problem, my ability to form and maintain close relationships with others (including the people I live with) is impaired.
This item explores the effect of the psychological distress on the patient's interpersonal connections and family dynamics.
- 0 - Not at all
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8 - Very severely