Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Exam

What term describes the ability of a screening test to correctly identify individuals with the disease?

1. Specificity

2. Sensitivity

3. Prevalence

4. Incidence

The correct answer is: Sensitivity

The term that describes the ability of a screening test to correctly identify individuals with the disease is sensitivity. Sensitivity measures how well a test can detect true positives, meaning it reflects the proportion of actual positives that are correctly identified by the test. A high sensitivity means that few individuals with the disease are missed, making the test effective for detecting cases of the disease. In contrast, specificity, while also a key concept in screening tests, refers to the test’s ability to correctly identify those without the disease, focusing on true negatives rather than true positives. Prevalence and incidence pertain to the frequency of a condition in a population, with prevalence representing the total number of existing cases and incidence referring to the rate of new cases in a specific time frame. These terms do not assess the effectiveness of a test in identifying individuals with a disease.