Tag: test

Choosing Cut-Offs in Tests

Post author By neurotroph
Post date June 7, 2016
Categories In Science
No Comments on Choosing Cut-Offs in Tests

My last blog post was on the difference between Sensitivity, Specificity and the Positive Predictive Value. While showing that a positive test result can represent a low probability of actually having a trait or a disease, this example used the values of Sensitivity and Specificity as pre-known input. For established tests and measures they indeed […]

Visualizing Sensitivity and Specificity of a Test

Post author By neurotroph
Post date June 2, 2016
Categories In Science
1 Comment on Visualizing Sensitivity and Specificity of a Test

In my university course on Psychological Assessment, I recently explained the different quality criteria of a test used for dichotomous decisions (yes/no, positive/negative, healthy/sick, …). A quite popular example in textbooks is the case of cancer screenings, where an untrained reader might be surprised by the low predictive value of a test. I created a […]