Validity of the World Health Organization Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) Screener in a Representative Sample of Health Plan Members

Overview

Journal Int J Methods Psychiatr Res

Specialty Psychiatry

Date 2007 Jul 12

PMID 17623385

Citations 215

Authors

Ronald C Kessler

Lenard A Adler

Michael J Gruber

Chaitanya A Sarawate

Thomas Spencer

David L Van Brunt

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The validity of the six-question World Health Organization Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) Screener was assessed in a sample of subscribers to a large health plan in the US. A convenience subsample of 668 subscribers was administered the ASRS Screener twice to assess test-retest reliability and then a third time in conjunction with a clinical interviewer for DSM-IV adult ADHD. The data were weighted to adjust for discrepancies between the sample and the population on socio-demographics and past medical claims. Internal consistency reliability of the continuous ASRS Screener was in the range 0.63-0.72 and test-retest reliability (Pearson correlations) in the range 0.58-0.77. A four-category version The ASRS Screener had strong concordance with clinician diagnoses, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.90. The brevity and ability to discriminate DSM-IV cases from non-cases make the six-question ASRS Screener attractive for use both in community epidemiological surveys and in clinical outreach and case-finding initiatives.

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