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ADHD Test for Adults: the ASRS Explained
The ASRS is the short screen most clinicians use first with adults. Many people meet it right after their own child gets evaluated, when the report reads a little too familiar. Here is what it asks, and how a clinician reads it.
- Six questions in Part A
- Adults 18+
- Self-report
Available through care
This questionnaire is published by the World Health Organization, and we don't publish it here. If it is relevant to your child's care, your Emora clinician may use it as part of their assessment.
Get an evaluationPublic version of the questionnaire is available from the publisher.
What a ASRS v1.1 score can and cannot tell you
The ASRS is a six-question screen for ADHD symptoms in adults, developed with the World Health Organization for use in the general population.
Clinicians use it to decide who to evaluate, then look for evidence the pattern was present in childhood and rule out sleep, mood and thyroid conditions that imitate it.
Wherever it is used, a rating scale is a screen, not an assessment. A clinician reads it alongside a history, an interview, and often a second rater such as a teacher or the other parent before drawing any conclusion.
About the ASRS
Ronald Kessler and colleagues developed the ASRS v1.1 (Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale) with the World Health Organization. It is the screen used most often with adults in primary care and mental health settings. The screener version asks six questions, drawn from the diagnostic criteria, about the past six months. A longer 18-question version adds detail for a clinician to work through. The six questions do the screening.
Adult ADHD often looks different from the version people picture. Hyperactivity turns inward. It shows up as restlessness, or as not being able to sit through a movie. Inattention shows up as half-finished projects, chronic lateness, or a job built around deadlines because nothing else creates urgency. Many adults have built years of workarounds, which is why a screener can come back low for someone who still meets criteria.
A screener is also not how adults get diagnosed. An evaluation looks for signs the pattern was there in childhood, using school reports, your own memories, and sometimes a parent’s account. It rules out the conditions that imitate ADHD: poor sleep, anxiety, depression, and thyroid problems. Our psychologists evaluate adults as well as children, over video. Many of those adults book in the weeks after their child’s report arrives.
How the ASRS is scored
Only the first six questions carry the screen. Each answer falls inside or outside a shaded box printed on the form. A set number of marks inside those boxes is the point the authors treat as consistent with adult ADHD. The longer version adds detail for a clinician to work through, but it does not change the screen.
Adult ADHD is diagnosed on your history as much as on your symptoms now. A clinician looks for signs the pattern was there in childhood, and rules out the things that imitate it: poor sleep, anxiety, depression, and thyroid problems. A screener can also come back low for someone who has spent decades building workarounds.
A screener is not a diagnosis. Cutoffs are set to catch more than they miss, so a high score is a reason to talk to a clinician, not an answer.
Common questions
No. We do not publish the questionnaire here. It is available from its publisher, and your clinician can use it as part of an evaluation or an intake.
Very common. ADHD runs in families, and a child’s evaluation is one of the most common routes to an adult one. Reading a report about your child and finding your own history in it is not a coincidence.
An intake, testing sessions, then a written report and a feedback session. The questions look at how attention, learning, and mood show up in your work and home life now. They also look back at your history, using what you remember and old school records if you still have them. It is all over video, and you will need a quiet block of time to yourself.
It is a validated screener, which is a narrower claim than it sounds. It sorts people into worth-evaluating and not. It cannot diagnose ADHD, and a low score does not rule it out, especially if you have spent years working around it.
Medication decisions follow a diagnosis, not a screener. If an evaluation supports one, we offer psychiatry and medication management alongside therapy, with your prescriber and therapist working from the same notes.
References
- Kessler, R. C., Adler, L., Ames, M., Demler, O., Faraone, S., Hiripi, E., Howes, M. J., Jin, R., Secnik, K., Spencer, T., Ustun, T. B., & Walters, E. E. (2005). The World Health Organization adult ADHD self-report scale (ASRS): A short screening scale for use in the general population. Psychological Medicine, 35(2), 245-256. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291704002892 Official source
Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-v1.1) Screener, World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview.
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