Question

Specificity of an instrument used for diagnosis refers to what?

Answer 1

Specificity of an instrument used for diagnosis refers to ability to detect the absence of a condition or illness.

Specificity of a screening or diagnostic test is the proportion of patients without the disease who have a negative test result or true negative. A test with high specificity is very good at identifying the patient without any disease. Specificity is required to be high in order that few cases without the disorder are screen positive (avoiding falsely alarming parents and costly referral for in-depth).