Self-screeners measure how often you have head pain and how severe it is, and may help identify migraine disease or other headache disorders. While these tests are a great way to monitor your health, they do not and should not replace a formal diagnosis from a healthcare provider.
The National Headache Foundation has gathered these validated tools for anyone experiencing frequent headache attacks, anyone who suspects they have migraine disease, or anyone who’s dealing with unclear symptoms.
Below, you’ll find an overview of tools that can help you measure how your condition affects your daily life and clearly describe your symptoms to a healthcare provider:
ID Migraine Self-Administered Screener
Used to identify if the symptoms you’re experiencing indicate a high probability of migraine disease.
Functional Impact Assessments
Used to understand how headache attacks and head-related pain affect your daily life and make it easier to share your symptoms with your healthcare provider.
- Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) Questionnaire
- Headache Impact Test (HIT-6)
Allodynia Symptom Checklist
Designed to help identify the presence and severity of allodynia, a condition where typically non-painful touch feels painful, which often occurs alongside migraine disease.
What are headache disorders, and why do they happen?
A headache disorder is a medical condition or diagnosis characterized by recurring head pain, which can be further classified into two main types: primary and secondary.
Primary headache disorders
Primary headache disorders happen on their own. The disorder itself is the primary medical condition, rather than a symptom of a different disease, and can be grouped into these categories:
- Tension-type headache
- Migraine disease
- Cluster headache and other Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalalgias (TACs)
If you live with a primary headache disorder, your headache attacks are often triggered by unique physical or environmental triggers. While everyone is different, we often see attacks linked to emotional stress, changes in sleep, specific foods or alcohol, weather shifts, and hormonal changes.
Secondary headache disorders
On the other hand, secondary headache disorders occur as a direct result of an underlying disease or condition, including (but not limited to):
- Infection
- Head trauma
- Medication overuse
- Cerebrovascular disorders (e.g., stroke)
- Intracranial mass lesions (e.g., tumors)
- Disorders of cranial or cervical vessels
- Non-vascular intracranial disorders (e.g., low or high cerebrospinal fluid pressure)
While an occasional, mild headache attack once or twice a month is common, we recommend seeking medical attention if you experience debilitating attacks several times a week or if attacks increase in intensity.
How can you tell what type of headache disorder you have?
Head pain can show up in many different ways, so identifying your specific disorder is the first step to finding lasting relief.
The main primary headache disorders are as follows:
Tension-type headache
A mild-to-moderate pain, or the type that does not always impede you from your daily activities.
Considered one of the most common types of headache, tension-type headache is often described as a dull, aching pain or a sensation like a tight band squeezing around your forehead and the back of your head.
Migraine disease
A moderate-to-severe type of pain, and it does interrupt your daily activities.
Migraine disease is a complex neurological condition that involves much more than head pain. While it often causes moderate to severe throbbing (usually on one side of the head), a migraine attack is usually accompanied by symptoms like nausea, vomiting, visual auras, and extreme sensitivity to light, sound, or smell.
Cluster headache
Known for causing excruciating, piercing one-sided pain that strikes quickly, cluster headache is often characterized around or behind the eye, forehead, and temple.
Attacks often occur in clusters over weeks or months, which vary based on the two cluster headache types and may come with watering eyes, redness in the eyes, drooping eyelids, and facial sweating, or nasal congestion on the affected side.
Medication overuse headache
Medication overuse headache disorders (MOH) are a secondary condition caused by taking acute headache medications, or medications you take during an attack, too often. Ironically, the medicine you take for relief can increase the frequency of your headache attacks, often leading to symptoms nearly every day.
How are headache disorders and migraine disease treated?
Treatment plans for headache disorders are made specifically for an individual, based on their diagnosis, how often the attacks happen, and how much they affect their day-to-day life.
Most plans involve a combination of two approaches:
Acute headache treatments
Also called abortive medications, these are taken at the first sign of a headache attack. The goal is to stop the pain and other symptoms once an episode has already started.
Options include:
- Over-the-counter (OTC) options
- Prescription medications
Preventive headache treatments
Preventive (prophylactic) therapies are taken regularly, often daily or monthly. These serve to reduce how often headache attacks occur and how severe they feel.
In addition to medications, a comprehensive treatment plan usually includes lifestyle changes, such as staying hydrated, maintaining consistent sleep schedules, and managing stress, alongside identifying personal triggers.
IMPORTANT: Always request a proper diagnosis from a clinician before starting any new treatment regimen.
Explore resources for living with a headache disorder or migraine disease
Managing a headache disorder or migraine disease is an ongoing journey, but please remember that you never have to face it alone. We're here to support you far beyond these initial assessments, providing the tools, education, and compassionate community you need to improve your quality of life.
Learn more about migraine and related conditionsWhich headache disorder assessments should you start with?
Standardized tests are a great place to start when you want to translate your lived experience into clear data for your healthcare provider. While these tools don’t provide a medical diagnosis on their own, they support clinical evaluation and help your voice be heard during your appointment.
We recommend starting with these specific assessments, in this order:
1. ID Migraine Self-Administered Screener
This highly validated ID Migraine Screener is used to identify the core symptoms of migraine disease.
To take the screener, answer “Yes” or “No” to these three questions based on your experiences over the last three months:
1. Has a headache attack limited your activities for a day or more?
2. Are you nauseated or sick to your stomach when you have head pain?
3. Does light bother you when you have head pain?
What your results mean:
0 out of 3 “Yes” answers
You’re unlikely to have migraine disease.
1 out of 3 “Yes” answers
You have some symptoms consistent with migraine disease.
2 out of 3 “Yes” answers
There’s a 93% chance that you live with migraine disease.
3 out of 3 “Yes” answers
There’s a 98% chance that you have migraine disease.
2. Functional Impact Assessments: MIDAS and HIT-6
Choose one of these validated assessment tools to help you track your migraine symptoms and communicate their impact to your healthcare provider.
Both the Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) and the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6) provide helpful information that can support diagnosis and treatment planning, so we recommend choosing the one that feels most relevant to your experience rather than completing both.
- Choose MIDAS if you want to measure how headache attacks affect daily activities such as work, school, household responsibilities, and social events.
- Choose HIT-6 if you want to assess headache pain severity, its impact on your quality of life, and how well your treatment is working over time.
Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) Questionnaire
The MIDAS questionnaire measures the impact of your condition by tracking how it disrupts your life. Specifically, it helps you count the number of days over the past three months that you missed or had a major drop in productivity across three areas:
- Paid work and education: This includes days missed or where your work was cut in half at your job or school.
- Household chores: This tracks days when you couldn’t handle housework or chores.
- Family, social, and leisure activities: This covers missed events with loved ones or hobbies.
The MIDAS tool helps your healthcare provider determine the best treatment plan from your very first visit.
Step 1: Take the test.
Step 2: Share your results with your primary care provider to help address your specific level of impairment and create a suitable treatment plan.
Headache Impact Test (HIT-6)
The HIT-6 tool helps you describe the overall severity of your pain and how it affects you emotionally and mentally. While the MIDAS assessment focuses mostly on missed days, the HIT-6 measures how headache attacks disrupt your ability to function in daily life.
You can use this assessment to:
- Understand how your symptoms impact your daily life (e,g., work, social time, and focus)
- Share your experience more clearly with your healthcare provider
- Keep track of changes and see if your treatment is helping
When your provider really understands how your headache attacks affect your daily routine, it’s easier for them to find a treatment that works for you.
Step 1: Take the test.
Step 2: Share your results with your primary care provider to help them understand the daily reality of your condition.
3. Allodynia Symptom Checklist
Allodynia is a type of nerve pain where a normally painless touch (e.g., brushing your hair, resting your head on a pillow, or feeling water in the shower) suddenly causes pain. It usually occurs during a migraine attack as a sign that your central nervous system has become highly sensitized. While it’s most common in those living with migraine disease, it can also appear in other headache disorders, though this is less frequent.
- Prevalence in headache disorders: Research shows that many people with migraine experience allodynia symptoms.
- How it works in the body: It’s linked to changes in how the nervous system processes pain, though the exact cause isn’t fully understood yet.
- Common triggers: Light touch, pressure, or even temperature changes can cause pain.
This Allodynia Symptom Checklist measures whether you have this skin sensitivity and how severe it is.
Step 1: Complete the checklist
Step 2: Share your results with your doctor, as the presence of allodynia can influence which medications will be most effective for you.
How to talk to your health provider about head pain
Getting ready before your appointment can help your doctor understand what’s going on and give you the right treatment. Studies show that clear communication between patients and providers can improve health outcomes and overall quality of care.
- Prepare your medical history: Take some time before your appointment to write down the specifics of your experience:
- When did your headache attacks first begin?
- How often do the attacks currently occur?
- How long does a typical attack last if left untreated?
- Where is the pain located (e.g., front, back, one side) and what does it feel like (e.g., throbbing, stabbing, dull)?
- What associated symptoms do you experience (nausea, light/sound sensitivity, visual auras)?
- What are your suspected triggers (stress, sleep disruptions, diet, hormones)?
- Bring your assessment results: Print out and bring your completed ID Migraine, MIDAS, HIT-6, and Allodynia questionnaires. These give your doctor helpful, standardized information right away and can make it easier to reach a diagnosis.
- Track your symptoms: Keep a simple daily record of your headache attacks for a few weeks before your visit. This helps your doctor spot patterns faster. If you’re not sure where to start, you can use our downloadable headache tracking diary to guide you.
- Describe the true impact on your life: Be honest with your doctor about how your condition limits you. Mention the work days you’ve missed, the family events you’ve had to skip, and the times you’ve struggled through daily chores. Your questionnaire results (like MIDAS and HIT-6) can help back this up.
- Talk about your goals and concerns: Medical care is a partnership, meaning your voice and thoughts matter, too. Don’t hesitate to bring up concerns about side effects, costs, or how treatment fits into your daily life.
Take the next step toward relief
Your assessment results are a helpful starting point for understanding what's going on and what kind of care might help. From here, the next step is simply choosing the kind of support that feels right for you.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
How do you know if your head pain is serious?
While most headache disorders are not life-threatening, you should seek immediate emergency medical attention if you experience a sudden, severe “thunderclap” headache attack, or if your head pain is accompanied by symptoms like confusion, high fever, numbness, weakness, vision loss, or a stiff neck.
How do you test for a headache disorder?
Generally speaking, doctors look at your symptom history, use screening tools like the ID Migraine or MIDAS questionnaire, and may ask you to track your headaches over time. A physical exam also helps rule out other causes.
What are the types of headache disorders?
The main primary headache disorders are tension-type headache, migraine disease, and cluster headache. Other conditions include secondary headache types, the most common being sinus headache, medication overuse headache (or rebound headache), and post-traumatic headache disorders.
What are the top causes of headache attacks?
If you’re prone to having a headache or migraine, common triggers can include stress, changes in sleep, weather shifts, dehydration, certain foods, and hormonal changes.
That said, headache disorders like migraine and cluster headache are neurological conditions that can cause attacks even without an identifiable trigger. For some people, certain factors may increase the likelihood of an attack, but triggers are not always the underlying cause of the condition.
How do you relieve head pain?
Relief depends on the type of headache and your diagnosis. Many people find comfort by resting in a quiet, dark room, using a cold compress, practicing relaxation techniques, or taking over-the-counter or prescribed medications as directed by a healthcare provider.
Medically reviewed June, 2026 by Fred Cohen, MD.