A New Coaching Tool – The Well-being Coaching Inventory

“The Well-being Coaching Inventory (WCI): Questionnaire Development and Validation” was published on Feb 20, 2025 in The American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (AJLM).  This paper has important practical significance as it presents a health and well-being coaching (HWC) instrument that can be used by HWC coaches and researchers alike.  As with our recent blog on GLP-1 meds, this new article was also authored by members of the Wellcoaches family: co-authors Margaret Moore, Erika Jackson, Rosie Hunter, and Gary Sforzo are all part of the Wellcoaches team who worked on the WCI.  This team was led by Sebastian Harenberg, Ph.D., who is an expert in questionnaire development and validation processes. 

The WCI was created to support coaching the whole person connecting both work and personal life.  Our expert team did the in-depth analysis of established well-being measures to develop 49 concise questions with high relevance to HWC.  The inventory is sub-divided into four critical dimensions: 

Mind

Body

Work

 Life 

The Life sub-dimension represents personal life away from work, but the inventory thoroughly emphasizes work well-being.  The 49 questions capture responses for psychometric and evidence-based constructs, including but not limited to mindfulness, self-compassion, autonomy, creativity, satisfaction, burnout, vitality, flourishing, work-life balance, self-actualization, and gratitude. 

After developing the questions, an extensive statistical process was undertaken to establish WCI reliability and validity.  Three rounds of sampling on over 800 participants yielded rewarding and valuable results.  After the analyses were complete, the WCI was found to be both reliable and valid.  It was determined that a shorter 20-item version should be applied for quantifiable or numerical data.  Alternatively, the 49-item version, which requires 15-20 min to complete, is ideal for use as a coaching intake tool.  

The 20-item WCI yields total score for well-being and a sub-score for each of the four dimensions. This shorter version can and should be used in repeated fashion over time to document changes in these scores.  This can be done for an individual, or a group (e.g., if a coach wanted to check their own WCI scores across all their clients).   If an individual WCI item is of interest for a client, then either version of the WCI can be used to investigate change over time in that item.  Using the WCI at regular intervals (e.g., every 3 months) can help a coach assess progress on well-being issues important to their client.

The 20-item version of the WCI also provides a handy HWC research tool.  It takes only 5-10 minutes to complete and can be administered remotely to large numbers of participants in a study.  Researchers have long awaited a validated HWC core outcome measure and the WCI provides just that.  Now, in addition to examining population specific biometric measures such as body weight or blood pressure, the WCI is an outcome measure that delves specifically into the coaching process for any group of clients.  

When studying patients with diabetes we measure A1C to examine glucose control, but the WCI provides a measure to determine HWC impact on specific coaching-relevant results.  The WCI is a core coaching outcome measure that can be applied across all HWC research and will help us to better understand the general well-being impact of HWC processes.

Both the WCI article and the actual WCI inventory are freely available for your use.

As a coach, you can send clients to the Wellcoaches WCI web home.  They enter a return email, and after answering all the questions, the results are sent back to them in only a minute or two.  The coach can ask the client to share their WCI results leading to an abundance of potential topics to be addressed.  As a coach, you may applaud and emphasize excellence demonstrated by high scores on items such as gratitude, nutrition, and autonomy. Then you might suggest exploring items potentially presenting opportunities for improvement, such as self-compassion, sleep, job satisfaction, or time in nature.  Each client will present a unique and individual WCI profile for the coach to address in a client-centered manner.  Furthermore, you can track scores for the WCI core 20 items over time and document well-being progress for your client.  

Watch for a new class:  Wellcoaches is developing a WCI course to help coaches fully harness the power and apply this valuable HWC instrument.

In summary, the research highlighted here provides psychometric validity for an exciting new HWC tool.  The WCI investigates many HWC-relevant items that can be totaled for a well-being score ……or examined as individual coaching topics.  The coach can recommend the WCI be completed by clients and then use it to structure and optimize coaching conversations – it is a powerful coaching tool.  Researchers can use the WCI as a core HWC outcome measure to show improvements in well-being over time in groups of coaching clients.  The WCI is made available, as a gift from Wellcoaches, for use by coaches and clients, and researchers, everywhere.

Reference:

Harenberg S, Sforzo G, Hunter R, Jackson E, Moore M. The Well-Being Coaching Inventory (WCI): Questionnaire Development and Validation. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2025 Feb 20:15598276251320573. doi: 10.1177/15598276251320573.