ADHD test for adults

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder affects an estimated 2.8% of adults according to the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys published in 2017. This free self-observation questionnaire presents 28 situations across four axes and takes about eight minutes. It can neither confirm nor rule out a disorder.

How does attention difficulty show up in adulthood? The adult picture differs from the childhood one. Visible physical restlessness often recedes and gives way to inner restlessness, to trouble starting and finishing things, and to sharper emotional reactivity. Executive functions, meaning planning, task initiation, working memory and time estimation, are the dimensions most often reported in the adult literature. The updated European consensus statement coordinated by Kooij and colleagues, published in 2019, describes these presentations and stresses that they persist well into adult life.

Four axes structure this questionnaire. Sustained attention covers holding concentration, sensitivity to interruption and picking a task back up once it has been dropped. Organisation covers planning, getting started, meeting deadlines and how long the systems you set up actually survive. Restlessness and impulsivity cover the need to move, speaking out of turn, waiting and decisions made on the spot. Emotional regulation covers how strong reactions are, how quickly things settle again and how long rumination lasts. Each axis gets its own score, which avoids reducing the way a person functions to a single number.

Each item describes a concrete situation and you say how often it matches your experience, on a five-point scale running from never to almost always. Eight items are worded the other way round: a high answer lowers the score there. That design limits the tendency to agree mechanically with every statement, which inflates the results of most online questionnaires. The total is rescaled to 100 and placed in one of four reading bands. The score and its result band stay visible with no account and no payment; the axis breakdown comes with the subscription.

What this questionnaire does not say matters as much as what it shows. It does not measure how long the difficulties have been present, even though their persistence since childhood is central to a professional assessment. It does not measure their real impact on daily life either, nor the other possible explanations: sleep debt, anxiety, thyroid conditions, a prolonged period of overload. Two people can reach the same score for very different reasons, and untangling that is exactly what a conversation with a professional is for.

The questionnaire is free, online, and asks for no sign-up. Nothing is required before the result appears: no email address, no account. Saving the result and ordering a detailed report are offered afterwards and remain optional. The minimum age is 16, because the patterns described in adults do not transfer to a younger audience.

The 28 items were written for Brain Quiz from the published literature on attention difficulties in adults. No published scale is reproduced, in whole or in part. The World Health Organization ASRS, described by Kessler and colleagues in 2005, the CAARS and the DIVA are cited as landmarks of the field, never as the source of the items: reproduction rights for a use such as ours have not been established. Full references, with their DOI or publisher link, appear on the methodology page. The NICE guideline NG87, published in the United Kingdom and last amended in 2019, describes what a full assessment involves.

Three further pages complete this one. The ADHD test for women explores the so-called internalised presentation, compensation strategies and late identification, with items that share nothing with these. The guide on whether online ADHD tests are accurate explains what a self-report questionnaire can and cannot indicate. The guide on the adult ADHD assessment pathway sets out the concrete steps, who is involved and what waiting times look like in practice.

What should you do with the result? If it is low, it simply means your answers do not bring out a consistent set of traits. If it is high, it means your answers show traits frequently associated with attention difficulties in adults, and it gives you a concrete starting point for a conversation with a doctor or a psychologist. You can save the axis breakdown and bring it to the appointment: it is usually far more useful than an isolated number.