Construct validity and diagnostic accuracy of the Italian translation of the 18-Item World Health Organization Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-18) Italian translation in a sample of community-dwelling adolescents.

Aim of this prospective study was to evaluate the factor structure, internal consistency, and diagnostic efficacy of the Italian translation of the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-18; Kessler et al., 2005, 2007) in a sample of community-dwelling sample of adolescents. Three hundred eight Italian adolescents attending professional high schools were administered the ASRS-18; the adolescence ADHD module of the MINI interview was administered to obtain ADHD criterion diagnoses. Robust maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis results identified a bifactor model of the ASRS-18 items as the best-fitting model, RMSEA = 0.029, p > 0.99, TLI = 0.93, CFI = 0.95. Further analyses showed that 77.9% of the ASRS-18 reliable (ω = 0.78) score variance was due to the total score. In our study the ASRS-18 proved to be able to effectively differentiate adolescents who received a MINI ADHD diagnosis (n = 80) from adolescents who did not receive a MINI ADHD diagnosis (n = 163), area under the curve = 0.80, 95% confidence interval = 0.74, 0.86. Our data suggest that the ASRS-18 may represent an effective self-report measure to screen for ADHD in community-dwelling adolescents, at least in its Italian translation.