PURPOSE:The present study validated the abbreviated version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire for general use in New Zealand. METHODS:A random postal sample from the national electoral roll was used, and 808 questionnaires were returned. Psychometric properties of the instrument were assessed, including tests of the four-domain factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis. RESULTS:Goodness-of-fit from the confirmatory factor analysis were good, and the overall conclusion of the Rasch analysis supported the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) findings after dealing with problems of threshold ordering, local dependency, and differential item functioning (DIF). CONCLUSIONS:The WHOQOL-BREF is valid for general use in New Zealand. In the future work, the WHOQOL-BREF domain scores should either be analyzed using non-parametric statistics or data should be fitted to the Rasch model to derive interval person estimates.