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Validity of Pilot Adult ADHD Self- Report Scale (ASRS) to Rate Adult ADHD Symptoms

Lenard A. Adler, Thomas Spencer, Stephen V. Faraone, Ronald C. Kessler, Mary J. Howes, Joseph Biederman, Kristina Secnik

Annals of Clinical Psychiatry · 2006 · 685 citations · 4 references

DOI

TL;DR

The study aimed to validate the pilot Adult ADHD Self‑Report Scale against clinician‑rated ADHD Rating Scale in adults with ADHD. Sixty adults completed the self‑administered pilot ASRS followed by clinician‑rated ADHD RS, and internal consistency and inter‑rater agreement were evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and intra‑class correlation coefficients. The pilot ASRS demonstrated high internal consistency (α ≈ 0.88–0.89) and strong concurrent validity with the clinician‑rated scale (ICC ≈ 0.84 for total scores, 0.83 for subscales), with acceptable item‑level agreement (43–72%) and significant kappa values.

Abstract

The goal of this study was to validate the pilot Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (pilot ASRS) versus standard clinician ratings on the ADHD Rating Scale (ADHD RS).Sixty adult ADHD patients took the self-administered ADHD RS and then raters administered the standard ADHD RS. Internal consistency of symptom scores was assessed by Cronbach's alpha. Agreement of raters was established by intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) between scales.Internal consistency was high for both patient and rater-administered versions (Cronbach's alpha 0.88, 0.89, respectively). The ICC between scales for total scores was also high (0.84); ICCs for subset symptom scores were also high (both 0.83). There was acceptable agreement for individual items (% agreement: 43%-72%) and significant kappa coefficients for all items (p < 0.001).The pilot Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale symptom checklist is a reliable and valid scale for evaluating ADHD for adults and shows a high internal consistency and high concurrent validity with the rater-administered ADHD RS.