How Attention Snapshot scores work — and where the limits sit.

The internet does not need another ADHD quiz that returns a single confident number. It needs tools that explain themselves. This page is the long-form version of how Attention Snapshot decides what to ask, how it turns answers into scores, and where we think the honest limits of a five-minute self-screen sit.

We built the snapshot because the existing free options seemed to fall into two camps. On one side, clinical-grade screens like the ASRS and the Conners scales, which are excellent but live in PDFs and behind login walls and were never designed to give a person a useful picture of their own attention. On the other side, dozens of consumer quizzes that return a confident yes/no answer after eight clicks. We did not want to build a third version of either.

What follows is the framework. Where we have made choices that other tools have not made, we name them. Where we have decided not to claim something, we say why. If you are a clinician scanning this for credibility before a patient asks about it, you should be able to read this in ten minutes and decide.

Our framework

The questions in the snapshot are built on the DSM-5 symptom criteria for ADHD. The DSM-5 — the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association — is the dominant clinical framework for ADHD in most of the English-speaking world. It organises ADHD symptoms into two clusters of nine items each: inattention, and hyperactivity-impulsivity.

For an adult ADHD profile, the DSM-5 requires at least five symptoms in either cluster, present in two or more settings, with clear functional impairment, and with several symptoms present before age twelve. For children under seventeen, the threshold is six symptoms. Symptom count without impairment is not how clinicians think about ADHD, and it is not how the snapshot thinks about it either — we ask about both.

We extend the DSM checklist in two specific places: executive function and emotional regulation. These extensions follow the modern reformulation of ADHD pioneered by Russell Barkley, the Wender Utah work on adult-specific criteria, and the WHO's ICD-11, which explicitly names emotional regulation difficulties as an associated feature of ADHD. We treat them as core domains rather than peripheral. More on that below.

The five attention domains we score

Most free quizzes return a single number. We score five domains separately, because the shape of a person's profile across those five tends to be more useful than its average height. Two profiles with the same overall score can sit very differently across the five axes — and the way they sit is what points at the specific shifts that tend to help.

Inattention

The cluster the DSM-5 lists first: difficulty sustaining attention, missing details, losing track mid-task, struggling with follow-through on extended work, distractibility, forgetfulness in daily activities. In adults, this often shows up less as visible distractibility and more as a slow, steady tax on every task that does not have an immediate stake — the email half-written for two weeks, the paragraph re-read three times, the steady gap between what a person is capable of on paper and what a typical week makes them feel capable of.

Hyperactivity

The motor and restlessness side of the picture: feeling driven by an internal motor, difficulty doing nothing, being unable to settle through a long meeting or a slow afternoon. In adulthood, hyperactivity often migrates inward — the fidgeting becomes mental restlessness, the inability to sit still becomes an inability to switch off, and the urge for stimulation can show up as compulsive task-switching rather than visibly hyperactive behaviour. We score this distinct from impulsivity even though the DSM groups them together, because the two often dissociate in adults.

Impulsivity

The gap between an impulse and an action: blurting, interrupting, acting before thinking, difficulty waiting, sudden purchases or career pivots, decisions made in seconds that take months to reverse. Scoring this as its own axis matters because the rest of the profile reads differently when impulsivity is the loud signal rather than inattention. Two adults can both meet ADHD symptom count and live very different lives based on which of these two is louder.

Executive function

The cognitive system that sits above the moment-to-moment work: planning, prioritising, starting, sequencing, switching, finishing. Executive dysfunction is the gap between knowing what to do and being able to start doing it. The DSM does not score this directly; modern researchers, led by Russell Barkley, argue it is the central impairment in ADHD. We score it as its own domain because in many adults — particularly inattentive-leaning profiles — it is the loudest and most expensive part of the picture.

Emotional regulation

The speed and intensity of emotional responses, and how long they take to fade. The DSM-5 checklist does not include this. The Wender Utah adult criteria, the ICD-11, Russell Barkley's reformulation, and a large body of clinical observation all do. Roughly seventy per cent of adults with ADHD describe significant difficulty here, and many describe it as the single most expensive part of their attention profile. We score it separately, with its own band on the radar.

How scoring works

Every item in the snapshot maps to one of the five domains. The user answers on a five-point frequency scale ("rarely or never" through to "very often"). For each domain, we average the relevant items and normalise to a 0–1 scale, where 0 is "consistent answers in the typical range" and 1 is "consistent answers at the high end of the symptom range". The radar you see at the end of the snapshot plots those five normalised scores.

Each domain is then placed on a four-band rubric:

1. 1Typical range. Answers cluster in patterns common across the general population. Not "you do not have these traits"; "the frequency and intensity sit in the typical band".
2. 2Mild. A clear signal in this domain, but at a level most adults manage without significant disruption. Often worth tracking; often not worth a clinical conversation on its own.
3. 3Notable. Frequency and intensity high enough to be costing meaningful function in daily life. The kind of band that often fits a long-running pattern and tends to benefit from a clinical conversation.
4. 4Worth exploring. Answers consistent with significant symptom load in this domain. Not a diagnosis. A signal that this is the kind of pattern a clinician would want to look at.

We deliberately use plain-language band names rather than clinical labels, because clinical labels over-claim what a self-screen can offer. "Worth exploring" is honest. "Severe" would not be.

The confidence score, and why it exists

Self-report screens are vulnerable to a small number of well-known answer patterns: completing the questionnaire too fast to have read the items, answering very consistently regardless of what is being asked (acquiescence bias), or answering at the extremes across every item (extreme responding). All of those reduce the reliability of the result.

Rather than hide that uncertainty, we surface it. Every snapshot returns a confidence score alongside the radar. The score is computed from completion timing, answer variance, and distribution at the extremes. A low confidence score does not invalidate the result — it tells you, and any clinician you share the report with, to read the rest of the page with appropriate care.

What we deliberately do not do

Several decisions about the snapshot are easier to explain by listing what we will not do.

• We do not return a yes/no diagnosis. ADHD is diagnosed by a clinician, not by a questionnaire, and overstating that boundary is the single most common failure mode of online screens.
• We do not give medication advice. We will not tell you which medication to ask about, whether you should be on one, or how to use one. That is a conversation with a clinician.
• We do not present the snapshot as therapy. Reflective tools can be useful — they are not a substitute for therapeutic work, and we are clear about that.
• We do not sell individual data. The snapshot is supported by a small subscription on the wider product, not by selling responses, and we do not allow third-party tracking pixels in the assessment flow.
• We do not use scarcity, urgency or fake-progress patterns. The questionnaire is one screen at a time, no countdowns, no "this offer expires" copy on the result page.

The limits of self-report screening

Honesty about the limits of the tool is part of what makes it trustworthy. Five honest limits, in order of how often they bite.

Response bias

People who suspect they have ADHD — and most people taking the snapshot do — tend to answer with that suspicion in mind. That can both inflate and deflate scores. The confidence score catches the most extreme cases of pattern-answering, but it cannot fully correct for the underlying bias. A clinical assessment uses multiple informants and observed behaviour to triangulate around it; a self-screen cannot.

Single-informant data, especially in children

For the parent-reported child snapshot, we have one informant: the parent. Clinical assessment of children typically combines parent reports, teacher reports, and direct observation, because the same behaviour can look different across settings and observers. The snapshot is useful for what a parent sees at home and in shared settings; it does not substitute for the broader picture a clinical assessment can build.

Fluctuation across life stages

ADHD-style attention patterns do not show up identically across the life span. Hormonal shifts, sleep deprivation, depression, postnatal periods, perimenopause and high-stress life chapters all change the surface. A snapshot taken in a particularly hard month may read louder than a snapshot taken three months later, even when the underlying pattern is unchanged. Repeating the snapshot over time tends to give a more accurate picture than a single read.

Differential diagnosis

Many of the patterns the snapshot picks up overlap with other conditions: sleep disorders, thyroid dysfunction, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, substance use, autism spectrum presentations and several others. A self-screen cannot distinguish between these. A clinician can, and that is one of the reasons we treat the snapshot as the start of a conversation rather than its conclusion.

Impairment is hard to self-rate

The DSM-5 requires not only symptom count but functional impairment. People living with ADHD-style patterns over decades often calibrate their lives around those patterns until impairment becomes invisible — the cost is real, but it has been absorbed into "how I do things". The snapshot asks about impairment directly, but the honest answer is that self-rated impairment is one of the noisier signals in the picture.

Privacy and data handling

No account is required to take the snapshot. No email, name, or other identifying information is requested. Your answers are processed to build the report and stored in your browser session. Aggregate, anonymised analytics — counts, completion rates, dropout points — help us improve the questions and the scoring. We do not sell, share, or otherwise disclose individual responses, and we do not use them for advertising.

The PDF you download is generated locally where possible and is not retained on our servers in a form linked to you. If you create an optional account on the wider product, that account is governed by a standard privacy policy you can read at any time.

Who built this, and why

Attention Snapshot is built by a small independent team. We are not a clinical practice; we do not sell medical services; we do not have a treatment to up-sell at the end of the assessment. The framework was assembled by reading the DSM-5, the ICD-11, the Wender Utah work, Russell Barkley's reformulation of ADHD as a disorder of self-regulation, and the validated clinical screens those frameworks inform.

We chose to ship a screen with a high-resolution radar rather than a yes/no quiz because it was the tool we wished existed when we first started looking — at our own attention, in some cases, and at people we cared about, in others. We had read the clinical screens; we had taken the consumer quizzes; we kept finding that neither was the thing a person needs at the start of the process.

The design priorities, in order, are: do not overstate; describe a profile rather than label a person; produce a document a clinician can actually use; and respect the time and attention of the person taking the snapshot. Five minutes is a real budget for someone who is already wondering whether their attention is the issue.

How to use your results responsibly

A short list, because the use of the result is at least as important as the result itself.

1. 1Treat it as a starting point. The snapshot is a serious starting document for a conversation with a clinician. It is not the answer; it is the entry into the question.
2. 2Read the profile, not the average. The shape across the five domains is almost always more useful than the overall height. Pay attention to which axes are loud.
3. 3Note the confidence score. A low-confidence result is a signal to take the rest with extra care, not to dismiss it. Repeat the snapshot if you suspect you completed it in a hurry.
4. 4Bring the PDF to a clinician. The document is structured the way a clinician scans a screening report. Many adults find that opening the appointment by sharing it lets the conversation move faster.
5. 5Do not act on it alone. A reflective tool is a useful first move, not a treatment plan. Therapy, medication and lifestyle changes are decisions to make with professional input.

If you have not yet taken the snapshot, the adult version takes most people four to six minutes, and the parent-reported child version takes three to five.