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Behavioral and Brain Functions
Published in: Behavioral and Brain Functions 1/2018

Open Access 01-12-2018 | Research

Assessing ADHD symptoms in children and adults: evaluating the role of objective measures

Authors: Theresa S. Emser, Blair A. Johnston, J. Douglas Steele, Sandra Kooij, Lisa Thorell, Hanna Christiansen

Published in: Behavioral and Brain Functions | Issue 1/2018

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Abstract

Background

Diagnostic guidelines recommend using a variety of methods to assess and diagnose ADHD. Applying subjective measures always incorporates risks such as informant biases or large differences between ratings obtained from diverse sources. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that ratings and tests seem to assess somewhat different constructs. The use of objective measures might thus yield valuable information for diagnosing ADHD. This study aims at evaluating the role of objective measures when trying to distinguish between individuals with ADHD and controls. Our sample consisted of children (n = 60) and adults (n = 76) diagnosed with ADHD and matched controls who completed self- and observer ratings as well as objective tasks. Diagnosis was primarily based on clinical interviews. A popular pattern recognition approach, support vector machines, was used to predict the diagnosis.

Results

We observed relatively high accuracy of 79% (adults) and 78% (children) applying solely objective measures. Predicting an ADHD diagnosis using both subjective and objective measures exceeded the accuracy of objective measures for both adults (89.5%) and children (86.7%), with the subjective variables proving to be the most relevant.

Conclusions

We argue that objective measures are more robust against rater bias and errors inherent in subjective measures and may be more replicable. Considering the high accuracy of objective measures only, we found in our study, we think that they should be incorporated in diagnostic procedures for assessing ADHD.
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Metadata
Title
Assessing ADHD symptoms in children and adults: evaluating the role of objective measures
Authors
Theresa S. Emser
Blair A. Johnston
J. Douglas Steele
Sandra Kooij
Lisa Thorell
Hanna Christiansen
Publication date
01-12-2018
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Behavioral and Brain Functions / Issue 1/2018
Electronic ISSN: 1744-9081
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12993-018-0143-x

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