Screening for anxiety disorders - Sensitivity and specificity of the Anxiety Screening Questionnaire (ASQ-15)

Background The paper describes the rationale, sensitivity and specificity of the Anxiety Screening Questionnaire (ASQ), a disorder-specific screening instrument ibr use in primary care. Method Two hundred and fifty subjects sampled from psychiatric, primary care settings and the community, participated in a test - retest reliability as well as a procedural validity study using the M-CIDI with DSM - IV algorithms as a diagnostic yardstick. Results The ASQ was found to be easy to administer and acceptable and efficient in terms of sensitivity and specificity For generalised anxiety syndromes.The test - retest item reliability was good to excellent with kappa values of 0.6 or above. As compared with the validity standard, the DSM - IV/CIDI diagnoses caseness sensitivity was generally high (above 82%) for ail diagnostic domains covered, whereas the specificity was only high for DSM - IV threshold and subthreshold generalised anxiety disorder. Conclusions These preliminary findings demonstrate the usefulness of this anxiety screening questionnaire, constructed closely following the guidelines of specific diagnostic criteria.