Calculation transparency
How we score this questionnaire
Everything below is the actual rule the site applies, not a summary of it. The numbers on this page are read directly from the scoring code at page load, so they cannot drift out of step with what your result was calculated from.
There is no proprietary algorithm here. If you wanted to, you could reproduce your result on paper.
Note on the questions themselves
The item wording used on this site is currently placeholder text, not the real ASRS items, while licensing is confirmed in writing. The scoring rules described on this page are real; the questions are not yet. Nothing here should be used to interpret a result until that is resolved.
The questionnaire
The Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) v1.1 Symptom Checklist was developed with the World Health Organization and the Workgroup on Adult ADHD. It asks how often you have experienced each of a list of things over the past six months.
Instrument version in use: asrs-v1.1. Items: 18. Screened on: 6 (Part A). Descriptive only: 12 (Part B).
The response scale
Every item is answered on the same five-point frequency scale. The number beside each label is the value used in the sums further down.
| Answer | Value |
|---|---|
| Never | 0 |
| Rarely | 1 |
| Sometimes | 2 |
| Often | 3 |
| Very Often | 4 |
The screening result
The result you see is the classic binary screen. It uses only the six Part A items, because that is the part the original validation study tested.
Each of those six items counts once if your answer reaches that item's own threshold. The thresholds are not uniform: the published instrument shades different response cells for different items, and we follow that shading exactly.
The rule: 4 or more of the 6 Part A items counting = positive screen
| Item | Counts when you answer | Subscale |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sometimes or more often | Inattentive |
| 2 | Sometimes or more often | Inattentive |
| 3 | Sometimes or more often | Inattentive |
| 4 | Often or more often | Inattentive |
| 5 | Often or more often | Hyperactive / Impulsive |
| 6 | Often or more often | Hyperactive / Impulsive |
Subscales
The eighteen items split into two symptom groups. These are reported as a descriptive profile only. No threshold and no clinical label is applied to either, because the instrument does not define any.
| Subscale | Items |
|---|---|
| Inattentive | 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 |
| Hyperactive / Impulsive | 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 |
What we deliberately do not calculate
No total score out of 72
The official checklist states that no total score is derived from it. Bands built on an 18-item sum appear on other sites; we could not find a primary source for any of them, so we do not show one.
No population percentiles
We found no percentile figures with verifiable provenance. The most commonly repeated 'general population' average appears to describe a study's control group rather than a population. Published norms also use the binary count rather than the frequency sum, and those two numbers are not interchangeable.
No severity rating
This questionnaire measures how often something happens, not how much it costs you. Presenting frequency as severity would misrepresent the instrument.
The standard every number here has to meet
Before any figure appears anywhere on this site it needs four things: a primary citation, a calculation you could reproduce, a stated reference population, and stated limitations. If any of the four is missing, the number does not ship. An earlier draft of this project carried score bands and population norms taken from an AI-generated research summary; an external review caught that they had no verifiable source, and they were removed.
Limits of this method
- A positive screen is meaningful; a negative screen does not rule ADHD out. At the reported sensitivity, the screen misses a substantial share of people who do have ADHD.
- Frequency is all this measures. Clinical criteria also require difficulties in more than one setting and evidence that they began early in life, and this questionnaire asks about neither.
- Self-report is not observation. How a person rates their own attention is affected by mood, sleep, and what they are comparing themselves against.
- Reported accuracy varies by population and cut-off. The figures above come from specific study samples and are indicative rather than absolute.
Clinical review
Everything on this page comes from published research, and every number is traceable to a named study you can look up. The thresholds are the instrument authors' own, not ours. We publish the whole calculation for one reason: a screening result you cannot check is a result you have to take on faith, and health information should never require that.
Sources
- 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.Source of the six-item screen and its threshold. Reported sensitivity 68.7%, specificity 99.5%, internal consistency (Cronbach's α) 0.88.
- 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 frequency sums; 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. The six-item screen reached an AUC of 0.903 (95% CI 0.886–0.920) in a clinical sample of 646 adults with ADHD against 908 controls.