Where the ASRS comes from
The ASRS was developed by Ronald Kessler and colleagues with the World Health Organization, alongside a revision of the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The full version, the ASRS v1.1 Symptom Checklist, has 18 questions about the adult ADHD symptoms described in the DSM-IV, the edition of the diagnostic manual in use at the time.
The six questions of Part A were chosen statistically. In a 2005 study in Psychological Medicine, the authors compared questionnaire answers with blind clinical ratings of 154 adults from a US community survey and kept the six items that best predicted the clinicians’ classification. They recommended this short version for community surveys and for clinical outreach: settings where the aim is to find people who may benefit from a fuller assessment, not to make a diagnosis.
The Neuropsych ADHD check uses Part A as its six opening questions, in the official wording.
The six questions
Each question asks how often something has happened over the past 6 months, on a five-point scale: Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Very Often. Four questions are about inattention and organization, and two are about hyperactivity. In summary, they ask about:
- wrapping up the final details of a project once the challenging parts are done
- getting things in order for a task that requires organization
- remembering appointments or obligations
- avoiding or delaying the start of a task that requires a lot of thought
- fidgeting or squirming with your hands or feet when you have to sit for a long time
- feeling overly active and compelled to do things, as if driven by a motor
These are summaries. The licence does not allow changes to the questionnaire itself, so the check shows the official items exactly as published.
How Part A is scored
Part A does not add up points. Each answer either counts or does not. For the first three questions, an answer of Sometimes, Often or Very Often counts. For the last three, only Often or Very Often counts. On the official form, the answers that count are the shaded boxes.
The authors set the threshold at four: if four or more of the six answers count, the result is positive. The check needs all six answers to give a count. If you skip a question, it shows no count rather than guessing.
The remaining twelve questions of the checklist, Part B, ask about other symptoms in more detail. In the 2005 study, the six-question version did better than the full 18 questions on sensitivity, specificity and overall accuracy, which is why Part A is often used on its own.
Who it is for and how to answer
The licensing page describes the questionnaire as designed for adults aged 18 and over. It asks about your own experience, so answer for yourself rather than for how you think others see you.
- Think about the whole of the past 6 months, not just this week.
- Picture an ordinary stretch of days, not your best or your worst.
- Answer quickly and honestly. There are no right answers, and no single question decides the result.
- If something has changed recently, such as a new job, a new baby or a period of poor sleep, note it down. A clinician will want to know.
What a positive result means
A positive Part A means that your answers to six questions about the past six months crossed a threshold. It is a reason to talk to a specialist, not a diagnosis. NYU, which licenses the questionnaire, describes it as not a standalone diagnostic tool, says that a diagnosis should never be based on its score alone, and advises people who score positively to work with a clinician on further evaluation. NICE guideline NG87 makes the same point for rating scales in general.
The six questions do not ask when things started, whether they happen across settings, how much they cost you, or what else might explain them. Those are exactly the points a clinician needs to establish, as described in what happens after an online ADHD test. Stress, poor sleep, low mood and anxiety can all push up answers about concentration and restlessness; ADHD or something else? looks at these overlaps.
What a negative result means
A result below the threshold does not rule ADHD out. In the 2005 study, Part A picked up 68.7% of the adults whom clinicians diagnosed, so about 3 in 10 did not reach the threshold. It rarely flagged people the clinicians did not diagnose (specificity 99.5%). That sample was small, though, and deliberately included many people who reported ADHD in childhood, so the figures do not transfer directly to every group.
The questions were written against the DSM-IV criteria. The current manual is the DSM-5-TR, and a DSM-5 version of the questionnaire, the ASRS-5, also exists. The check uses version 1.1.
Licence and attribution
The ASRS v1.1 Part A may be used in electronic form with attribution and without other changes. The check shows this notice next to the questions:
The 6-question Adult Self-Report Scale-Version1.1 (ASRS-V1.1) Screener is a subset of the 18-question Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale-Version1.1 (Adult ASRSV1.1) Symptom Checklist. © New York University and the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
If you come across the ASRS on another site, check that it is intact. The Harvard team that maintains it asks that any recreated version keeps all the response options, the original scoring and the two levels of shading. To see how the questionnaire fits with the rest of the picture, read signs of ADHD in adults.
General information, not a diagnosis
This guide explains how ADHD is described and assessed. It does not replace an assessment by a qualified clinician, and the sources it cites do not endorse Neuropsych.
References
- Kessler RC, Adler L, Ames M, Demler O, Faraone S, Hiripi E, Howes MJ, Jin R, Secnik K, Spencer T, Ustun TB, Walters EE. 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. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291704002892
- Harvard Medical School, National Comorbidity Survey. Adult ADHD Self-Report Scales (ASRS). https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/asrs.php
- NYU Langone Health, Technology Opportunities & Ventures. Adult ADHD Self-Report Screener (ASRS v1.1). https://license.tov.med.nyu.edu/product/asrs6Qscreener
- American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR). 2022. https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management (NICE guideline NG87). Published 2018, updated 2019. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng87/chapter/recommendations