An important disadvantage of most indicators of health related quality of life used in public health surveillance is their length. In this study the authors investigated the reliability and validity of a short indicator of health related quality of life, the Dutch version of the four item 'CDC Core Healthy Days Measures' (CDC HRQOL-4). The reliability was evaluated by calculating Cronbach's alpha of the CDC HRQOL-4. The concurrent validity was tested by comparing the CDC HRQOL-4 with three other indicators of health related quality of life, the SF-36, the WHOQoL-BREF and the GHQ-12. The construct validity was evaluated by assessing the ability of the CDC HRQOL-4 to discriminate between respondents with and without a (non-mental) chronic condition, depression, a visit to the general practitioner and use of prescription drugs. Randomly sampled respondents from the city of Utrecht were asked to fill in a questionnaire. 659 respondents (response rate 45%) completed the questionnaire. Participants represented the adult, non-institutionalised population of the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands: 58% women; mean age 41 years; 15% of non-Dutch origin. The reliability of the CDC HRQOL-4 was good. Cronbach's alpha of three of the four CDC HRQOL-4-items was 0.77 which is good for internal consistent scales. The concurrent validity was good. The four items of the CDC HRQOL-4 showed higher correlations with their corresponding domains of the other instrument than the other domains. Comparison of respondents with or without a chronic condition, depression, visit to the GP and use of prescription drugs produced evidence for an excellent construct validity of the CDC HRQOL-4.