title: Performance of screening and diagnostic tests. Application of receiver operating characteristic analysis.
abstract: Evaluation of psychiatric screening and diagnostic tests has benefited from the application of sensitivity, specificity, the kappa-statistic, and predictive values. These measures derive their meaning from a single criterion threshold. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis extends assessment of test performance by providing information about all possible pairs of achievable sensitivity and specificity values. The ROC analysis offers a comprehensive means for comparing different tests or different scoring procedures for one test. As a demonstration we used the ROC analysis to evaluate three types of scoring rules for one psychiatric test, the Health Opinion Survey. The demonstration indicated that ROC analysis can profitably take a place among the standard methods for test evaluation in psychiatric research. In addition, ROC analysis can assist clinicians in selecting appropriate test procedures for particular patient populations.
mesh_terms: D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D013223:Statistics as Topic