Screening questionnaireWHO ASRS v1.1 · Part A screen
Is it worth talking to someone about ADHD?
This is the adult ADHD screening questionnaire used in published research, scored exactly the way the research says to score it. It takes about four minutes, asks nothing about who you are, and shows you the rules before you start.
- 18 questions
- about 4 minutes
- no account
| Instrument | Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) v1.1 Symptom Checklist |
|---|---|
| Developed by | World Health Organization, with the Workgroup on Adult ADHD |
| Length | 18 items. You answer all 18 |
| Screen | A validated 6-item subset (Part A) produces the result |
| Response scale | Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Very Often |
| Threshold | 4 or more of the 6 Part A items = positive screen |
This is a screening questionnaire, not a medical assessment. It cannot tell you whether you have any condition — only a qualified clinician can evaluate that.
What you get, before you start
The free result, in full
No wall, no email, no account. When you finish, this is the page you land on — the screen outcome in plain language, the count behind it, and the rule that produced it. Below is a specimen with sample answers.
What the questionnaire measures
The ASRS asks how often you have experienced certain things over the past six months. Each item is rated on a five-point frequency scale.
Of the 18 items, six carry the screening result. Researchers found that this shorter set predicted who would meet criteria on a clinical interview about as well as the full scale did. The other twelve are recorded as a descriptive profile and are not scored against any threshold.
That is the whole of what it measures: symptom frequency. It does not measure how much these things affect your life, when they started, or what else might explain them — and a clinician needs all three.
Calculation transparency
The exact rule we apply
There is no proprietary algorithm here and nothing is weighted behind the scenes. Six items each count once if your answer reaches that item's frequency threshold. Four or more counts is a positive screen.
- You answer all 18 items on the five-point frequency scale.
- Each of the six Part A items is checked against its own threshold. Some count from Sometimes upward, others only from Often upward — that difference comes from the published instrument, not from us.
- The counts are added. Four or more out of six is a positive screen.
- The remaining twelve items are summarized as a descriptive profile, with no threshold and no clinical label attached.
The evidence
The numbers, and where they come from
Everything below traces to a peer-reviewed source. Reported performance varies by population and cut-off, so treat these as indicative rather than absolute.
- 68.7%
- Sensitivity of the 6-item screenKessler et al., 2005
- 99.5%
- Specificity of the 6-item screenKessler et al., 2005
- 0.88
- Internal consistency (Cronbach's α)Kessler et al., 2005
- 0.903
- Area under the curve, 95% CI 0.886–0.920Brevik et al., 2020
Primary references
- 1.Kessler RC, Adler L, Ames M, Demler O, Faraone S, Hiripi E, et al. The World Health Organization adult ADHD self-report scale (ASRS): a short screening scale for use in the general population. Psychological Medicine 2005;35(2):245–256.Development and validation of the 6-item Part A screener against clinical interview.
- 2.Kessler RC, Adler LA, Gruber MJ, Sarawate CA, Spencer T, Van Brunt DL. Validity of the World Health Organization Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) Screener in a representative sample of health plan members. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 2007.Four-level classification of Part A scores; reported AUC approximately 0.90.
- 3.Brevik EJ, Lundervold AJ, Haavik J, Posserud MB. Validity and accuracy of the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) and the Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) symptom checklists in discriminating between adults with and without ADHD. Brain and Behavior 2020;10(6):e01605.Independent replication in a clinical sample of 646 adults with ADHD against 908 controls.
What this cannot do
A negative screen does not rule ADHD out
At the reported sensitivity, the screen misses a meaningful share of people who do have ADHD. If your result is negative and you are still struggling, that result is not an answer.
It measures frequency, not impact
Clinical criteria require difficulties in more than one setting and evidence they began early in life. This questionnaire asks about neither.
It cannot separate ADHD from things that resemble it
Sleep problems, anxiety, depression, and thyroid conditions all produce similar difficulties with attention. Telling them apart is what an assessment is for.
It is a questionnaire, not a clinician
The scoring rules come from published research and are shown in full, so you can check them. What they cannot do is weigh your history, your circumstances, or anything you did not get asked about.
Ready when you are
No account, no email, and no advertising or analytics trackers on the questionnaire or your results. Your answers are scored on our server and stored against a random session ID.