The Spider Questionnaire
What It Measures
The Spider is a self-report questionnaire for people with joint hypermobility conditions that goes beyond joints and pain to capture the full range of symptoms these conditions can cause: fatigue, heart-rate changes on standing, digestive and bladder symptoms, and anxiety or depression. After completing it, results are plotted on a visual "spider web" chart, making it easy to see at a glance which symptom areas are affecting a person most.
Developed by Simmonds and colleagues, the Spider has 31 questions across eight symptom domains: neuromusculoskeletal, pain, fatigue, cardiac dysautonomia, urogenital, gastrointestinal, anxiety, and depression. Occupational therapists use it with adolescents, adults, and older adults who have hypermobility spectrum disorder (HSD) or hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) in home health and outpatient settings, both to screen for under-recognized symptoms and to help direct care; it is a symptom-impact screener rather than a diagnostic tool.
