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On this page: Overview
Key Takeaways
The S-Five has 25 items, each rated 0 to 10, covering five dimensions: internalising appraisals, externalising appraisals, sense of emotional threat, outbursts and impact on daily life. Its companion S-Five-T checklist records reactions to 37 trigger sounds.
No. A quiz score describes how much certain sounds affect you on the day you answer; it does not diagnose. Only a professional can rule out other explanations, such as hyperacusis, tinnitus or anxiety.
Search for a misophonia questionnaire and you will mostly find two things: academic papers that each describe one scale, and quiz pages that hand you a number in five minutes. Neither explains how the published scales compare, or what a score can and cannot say. That gap is what this page fills.
At Bollsen we make hearing protection, and we are not clinicians. Our main guide to earplugs for misophonia covers everyday tools for chosen moments, while this page sticks to the research instruments themselves. We do not host a quiz here and we do not interpret scores. We explain what each scale measures, who built it and where it is used, then point you to the people in the UK who can look at a result with you.
Is there an official misophonia test?
There is no single official misophonia test: no blood test, hearing test or scan identifies it, and no one questionnaire is accepted everywhere as the deciding tool. What does exist is a set of validated questionnaires that researchers and clinicians use to describe how strongly certain sounds affect a person.
Misophonia does not have its own stand-alone code in DSM-5 or ICD-11. In 2022 an international panel of researchers and clinicians agreed a shared research definition after four rounds of a Delphi process, keeping only statements that reached at least 80% agreement (Swedo et al., Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2022). Questionnaires give that definition something measurable to work with.
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Life+★ 4.7 · 3,700 reviewsLife+★ 4.7 · 3,700 reviewsMusic SoundPRO★ 4.8 · 514 reviewsWatersafe+★ 4.8 · 684 reviewsLife+★ 4.7 · 3,700 reviewsWhat do misophonia questionnaires actually measure?
Most misophonia scales measure the same broad territory: which sounds set off a reaction, how strong the emotional and physical response is, how a person thinks about the sound and the person making it, how they cope, and how much it gets in the way of work, study and relationships. They differ in length, in who fills them in, and in what they were built to do.
Some are short severity scales, designed to be asked in a few minutes. Others are long research instruments with separate subscales for triggers, feelings, body responses and coping. A few were built mainly to check whether misophonia-type reactions are present at all, not how severe they are.
Several of them ask about specific sounds. Chewing, breathing, sniffing, throat clearing, keyboard tapping and pen clicking appear again and again in their trigger lists, and our guide to common misophonia trigger sounds looks at those sounds in more detail.
Which validated misophonia scales exist?
Five misophonia questionnaires appear most often in published research: the A-MISO-S, the AMISOS-R, the Duke Misophonia Questionnaire (DMQ), the S-Five and MisoQuest. The table sets out what each measures, how many items it has and who uses it, with a link to the original paper.
| Scale | What it measures | Items | Who uses it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A-MISO-S (Amsterdam Misophonia Scale) | Severity: time taken up by the reaction, interference with social life, anger, resistance, control and avoidance. Adapted from the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) | 6 | Amsterdam UMC; first asked during a psychiatric interview, now used in research | Schröder et al., PLOS ONE, 2013 |
| AMISOS-R (Amsterdam Misophonia Scale, Revised) | A revised, self-report version of the Amsterdam severity scale, each item rated 0 to 4 | 10 | Amsterdam UMC; later population surveys | Jager et al., PLOS ONE, 2020 |
| Duke Misophonia Questionnaire (DMQ) | Nine subscales: trigger frequency, emotional, physical and thinking responses, coping before, during and after, impairment and beliefs | 86 | Duke University (US); research | Rosenthal et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2021 |
| S-Five (Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome Scale) | Five dimensions: internalising appraisals, externalising appraisals, sense of emotional threat, outbursts and impact, each item rated 0 to 10. A companion checklist, the S-Five-T, lists 37 trigger sounds | 25 | King’s College London; clinicians at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust; the UK prevalence study | Vitoratou et al., Psych, 2021; UK study, PLOS ONE, 2023 |
| MisoQuest | Whether misophonia-type reactions are present, built around the 2013 Amsterdam criteria; a single factor, answered on a 5-point agree to disagree scale | 14 | University of Warsaw (Poland); research | Siepsiak et al., IJERPH, 2020 |
The A-MISO-S came out of the first paper to propose diagnostic criteria, based on 42 patients seen in Amsterdam (Schröder et al., 2013). The Duke team developed the DMQ with 424 adults, and the MisoQuest authors tested their 14 items with 705 people in Poland. Each scale reflects the sample it was built on, which is one reason researchers keep developing new ones.
The Amsterdam group also used the revised AMISOS-R in a clinic sample of 575 people, where they recorded which other conditions appeared alongside misophonia (Jager et al., 2020). Our page on misophonia, ADHD and autism in adults looks at that overlap separately.
What is the S-Five, and where does the UK 18.4% figure come from?
The S-Five is a 25-item questionnaire developed at King’s College London, with each item rated from 0 to 10 across five dimensions of sound intolerance. Its first validation paper appeared in the journal Psych in 2021, built from the answers of a large group of people who identified with the condition (Vitoratou, Uglik-Marucha, Hayes and Gregory, 2021).
Two of those dimensions concern appraisals, meaning how a person reads the situation. Internalising appraisals turn the blame inward, towards the person’s own reaction, while externalising appraisals point it at whoever is making the sound. The others cover a sense of emotional threat, outbursts, and the impact on daily life. The S-Five-T trigger checklist sits alongside it and records which of 37 sounds produce a reaction.
In 2023 the same team, with the University of Oxford and NHS partners, applied the S-Five to 772 adults chosen to represent the UK population. S-Five scores were checked against interviews by specialist clinicians, and 18.4% of the sample reached the level where misophonia significantly burdens daily life (Vitoratou et al., PLOS ONE, 2023). That validated method is why the figure carries weight: it did not come from an online poll.
Why is an online quiz score not a diagnosis?
An online score is not a diagnosis because a questionnaire only describes what a person reports on one day, without anyone checking what else might explain the reaction. A score describes burden, it does not diagnose. In the UK study above, scores were paired with clinician interviews for exactly that reason.
Strong reactions to sound can overlap with hyperacusis, tinnitus, anxiety and other conditions, and telling them apart takes a professional who can ask follow-up questions. Many quiz sites also shorten, adapt or reword the original items, so their numbers may not match the published versions at all. That is why this page lists item counts and dimensions but leaves out any scoring thresholds.
If you have already filled in a questionnaire somewhere, the answers can still be useful. Use them as notes to bring to an appointment: which sounds, which situations, and how often daily life is affected.
Who can you talk to about a questionnaire result in the UK?
The usual first step in the UK is your GP, who can listen to what you have noticed and discuss a referral to audiology, ENT or psychology services. An audiologist can also check hearing and look at related sound sensitivities. The NHS page on hyperacusis describes misophonia as some sounds triggering an upsetting emotional response like anger or disgust.
Some NHS services see misophonia as a specialist area. The Oxford Health Specialist Psychological Interventions Centre (OHSPIC) lists it among the problems it works with, and referrals there need funding agreed by your local integrated care board, so ask your GP about a referral. Our guide on where to find support for misophonia on the NHS sets out that route step by step, and Misophonia UK offers peer information alongside it.
Where do everyday tools like earplugs fit in?
Questionnaires describe a pattern. They do not tell anyone what to do at a noisy dinner table. Some adults use simple everyday tools for chosen moments, such as a passive earplug that makes a room quieter, not silent, then take it out afterwards.
An earplug changes how loud a room is, not how a person reacts to a sound, and the NHS advises against wearing earplugs or muffs all the time because this could make you more sensitive to noise. If you want to look at that side, our guides on how to choose earplugs for misophonia and on when to wear earplugs and when to take them out cover it, and it is worth mentioning to your GP or audiologist too.
His connection to hearing protection stems from personal experience with sound sensitivity during live events and work in noisy environments, an issue that made him more aware of the long-term risks of unmanaged noise exposure. Today, as both a communicator and a user of BOLLSEN products, he is passionate about raising awareness around the importance of proactive hearing care.
At BOLLSEN, he develops data-driven marketing campaigns, writes SEO-focused articles, and manages communication channels that connect customers with practical knowledge about hearing protection. His work ensures that BOLLSEN’s message—prioritizing health, performance, and sustainability reaches a global audience in an engaging and trustworthy way.
Passionate about writing since childhood, Timotej combines creativity with a strong analytical approach, continuously testing new ideas in digital marketing, performance advertising, and social media. He believes in learning through innovation and collaboration, balancing leadership with openness to new perspectives.
Beyond his professional role, Timotej is committed to a healthy lifestyle and finds inspiration in fitness, sports, and quality time with friends. His personal passion for well-being aligns with BOLLSEN’s core values, making his work not only a career but also a cause he deeply believes in.