Stanford Chronic Disease Self-Efficacy 6-Item Scale (SSE) (SEMCD)

This scale asks a person with a long-term health condition how confident they are that they can manage it. Not what they know, and not what they are doing — whether they believe they are capable, which predicts whether they take self-management on at all.

Six questions cover ground common to most chronic conditions: keeping fatigue, physical discomfort, emotional distress, and other symptoms from interfering with what they want to do; doing things other than taking medication to reduce symptoms; and reducing the need to see a doctor. Each is rated 1 for not at all confident to 10 for totally confident, and the score is the mean of the six.

Licensing Notes: Developed by Kate Lorig and colleagues at Stanford through the Chronic Disease Self-Management study, published in Effective Clinical Practice (2001). Distributed free by the Self-Management Resource Center. Confirm before commercial use.

Learn More: The four domains covered — symptom control, role function, emotional functioning, and communicating with physicians — were chosen deliberately to be common across conditions rather than specific to one, which is what makes the same six items usable in arthritis, diabetes, heart failure, and cancer. Spanish and German versions exist.