Thoughts on Dosha Questionnaires
I get asked a lot what I think about dosha questionnaires - inventories of questions that are supposed to shed light on a person’s Ayurvedic constitution.
To spoil the punchline:
They’re not great.
They are wildly unreliable, frequently very misleading, and they have no basis in anything repeatable or consistent.
So I suppose you could say I have strong feelings about dosha questionnaires.
That is not to say that there aren’t a lot of valid reasons why a practitioner, practice, or patient might wish to use a questionnaire. There definitely are a lot of valid reasons why using a questionnaire might seem desirable at first glance. A handful that come to mind include the following (not an exhaustive list):
Convenience - it is very easy to have a questionnaire available on paper (and even moreso digitally) that a patient or client can complete themselves. Simply deliver the questionnaire, and then the practitioner can read, interpret, and repeat. This can be used for practice and care purposes, commercially (for example, on websites marketing Ayurveda-adjacent products), for engagement purposes on social media, etc.
Delivery - questionnaires can be sent to interested people in a variety of ways, and none of these involve the work of directly interfacing/interacting with those people. This is convenient (see above) and versatile, though I would argue fairly impersonal.
Advance data - questionnaires completed ahead of time provide the person interpreting them with data ahead of whatever service they might be offering, which can save them time.
A tool to use when other tools are not available - if a practitioner or practice is unable to diagnose a person’s constitution via other means (such as by taking a thorough history, visual assessment, pulse diagnosis, etc., and ideally a combination of these), a questionnaire may be an attractive alternative option.
Okay, so we’ve covered some reasons why it might seem like a good option to use a questionnaire.
However…
To use an inventory questionnaire and be confident in the data they provide - such as on a PHQ-9 for depression, a GAD-7 for anxiety, a PSS-10 for life stress, etc. - there has to be demonstrable, repeatable utility. Meaning: they have to be studied extensively via scientific inquiry first. One needs many, many samples of a questionnaire’s use in applicable environments to build a strong data set, and then there needs to be a way to verify that the answers each person gives on a questionnaire correlate consistently to what is being measured.
To the very best of my knowledge, no such tool exists in determining someone’s Ayurvedic constitution.
Though it is always possible that someone or a team could develop a robust questionnaire tool for determining an individual’s constitution, this is not the present reality. Currently, a whole host of practitioners, companies offering commercial goods, spas, and various other parties simply put together their own questionnaires without a basis in any reproducibility, and make those questionnaires available on the internet and/or otherwise.
Additionally, the inherent nature of a questionnaire is to capture data salient to the present moment. Rarely does anyone seek Ayurvedic care of any kind in a state of unbiased and fully/completely balanced health. A whole host of experiences and stimuli (short- and long-term), especially stresses and traumas of various kinds, impact the way an individual expresses themselves and views/understands themselves, starting from a very young age. Practically, this means that - virtually 100% of the time - when someone is completing a questionnaire, they are reporting with quite a bit of bias; bias based on worry or concern, bias based upon past care experiences, bias based upon how powerfully their emotions might be in the moment, etc. And bias is normal and natural. This is true even when questions about the past are asked, because they can only ever be asked without necessary nuance and appropriate individualized follow-up on a questionnaire.
Moreover, a questionnaire must be quick and efficient enough for a person to volunteer their time to sit and take it. The only way to accomplish this with a highly-nuanced modality like Ayurveda is to take shortcuts. When shortcuts are taken in Ayurveda, the result is virtually always and very unfortunately) some form of stereotyping - stereotyping based on body shape and size, stereotyping based upon personality self-report taken out of context, stereotyping based upon a variety of personal lifestyle preferences, and so on.
And when any amount of dosha-related data and insight is used to stereotype - even when intentions good - the result corrupts and corrodes the foundations of Ayurveda.
In short, dosha questionnaires capture only bits and pieces of a person’s constitution (prakrti) at best. And to the extent that they do even that, they are always marred by the biases of a person’s present state of health (vikrti). This is among the multitude of reasons why I never, ever use them, do not recommend them, and always, always diagnose constitutions personally.
And as always, if you are curious about your constitution & health (or health of a loved one), you can book a cost-free, 15min Consultation, and we’ll discuss!
Dr. Matt Van Auken, MD, MPH
Dr. Matt is an Ayurveda-trained, triple board-certified physician.
