The Well-Being Questionnaire (W-BQ) was first developed in the early 1980s as a 22-item measure. The W-BQ22 was further developed in the 1990s to form the W-BQ12 short-form with a balanced selection of positive and negative items. The W-BQ12 is widely used, particularly in clinical trials. It is available in several languages.

In the late 1990s, the W-BQ was further developed to include a total of seven 4-item subscales to measure generic and diabetes-specific well-being in the W-BQ28. The following subscales were added to the existing generic W-BQ12 measure to form the W-BQ28: Generic Stress, Diabetes-Specific Negative Well-being, Diabetes-Specific Positive Well-being and Diabetes-Specific Stress.

The W‑BQ28 subscales are designed to be scored separately and used in various combinations. However, it would not be sensible to sum all 28 items together as this would produce a mixture of generic and diabetes-specific items. It is more informative and interpretable to keep the diabetes-specific items separate from the generic items. See notes on scoring the “Scales” for comparing diabetes-specific well-being with generic well-being