ADHD Test — Free 18-Question Self-Check
About 5 minutes · 18 questions
Question 1 of 18
Picking up where you left off.
I reach the bottom of a page and realize I have taken in none of it.
The three patterns
- AT Attention hold
- How long a thing stays in focus once it stops being interesting.
- IM Impulse and motion
- How much arrives before the brake does — words, movement, starting.
- OR Order and finishing
- What happens between deciding to do something and it being done.
About the ADHD Test
Most pages with this title end by telling you whether you probably have it. This one will not, and the reason is worth saying before you start: a screening questionnaire cannot separate ADHD from the half-dozen other things that make attention, impulse and finishing go wrong. Poor sleep does it. An untreated thyroid does it. Anxiety, depression, grief, a noisy home, and a job that is genuinely dull all do it. What a set of questions can do is show you the shape of your own answers — whether your difficulty sits mostly in holding attention, mostly in the gap between thought and action, or mostly in getting from intention to a finished thing. That shape is useful. It tells you which advice to ignore, and it gives you specific examples to bring to a doctor instead of the sentence "I think I might have ADHD". Eighteen questions, three patterns, and no number pretending to be a diagnosis.
How it works
- Answer for the last six months, not for your worst week. Everyone loses the thread during a bad month, and a snapshot of a bad month tells you about the month.
- Use the middle option when a statement is genuinely sometimes true. Pushing every answer to an extreme makes all three patterns look equally high, which tells you nothing about which one leads.
- Read the reversed statements carefully. A few are written the other way round on purpose, so agreeing with everything without reading produces a flat profile rather than a strong one.
- When you finish you get all three patterns as bars, not just the top one. The gaps between them matter more than the heights — three even bars mean something different from one tall bar.
This is not a diagnosis and it cannot become one. ADHD is diagnosed by a clinician who takes a history, rules other things out, and checks that the difficulty has been there a long time and across more than one part of your life. A questionnaire on a website does none of that. If these patterns are costing you work, money or relationships, bring that to a doctor rather than to a score.
Frequently asked questions
What is ADHD?
ADHD stands for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a developmental difference in how the brain regulates attention, impulse and follow-through. The name misleads in one place: the trouble is usually not a shortage of attention but difficulty aiming it, which is why hours of complete absorption and a task abandoned just short of done belong in the same picture. What clinicians look for is a pattern — present since childhood, showing up in more than one setting, and genuinely getting in the way. Only a clinician can make that call.
Is this ADHD Test free, and does it need an account?
Free, and the eighteen questions do not ask for an account or an email. They are scored in your browser, so your answers never leave the device and there is nothing for us to store or lose. You can close the tab mid-way without leaving a trace, and nothing is emailed to you afterwards.
Can this tell me whether I have ADHD?
No, and no online questionnaire can. A diagnosis requires a clinician who takes a developmental history, checks that the difficulty appears in more than one setting, confirms it has been present for years rather than months, and rules out the other conditions that produce the same complaints. This page does none of those four things. What it gives you is a description of your answers, which is a reasonable thing to take to an appointment and a poor thing to treat as a result.
Which questions are these? Is it the official ADHD screener?
No. The standard adult self-report screener is the ASRS, published by the World Health Organization, and its own form requires written permission for reproduction whether or not money changes hands. We are an ad-supported site, so that permission would be required and we do not have it. Every one of these eighteen statements was written here instead. That has an honest consequence you should know: our questions have no published validation behind them, so they describe rather than measure.
How is this different from your concentration test?
The concentration test measures a performance — you find numbers in a grid and it times you, so it produces a number from something you did. This page asks you to report on months of your own life, which reaches things a five-minute task cannot see, such as whether paperwork sits for months. They answer different questions and neither substitutes for the other. If you want a measured score rather than a self-description, start there.
My three bars came out almost level. Does that mean nothing?
It means the difficulty is spread rather than concentrated, which is itself information. A level profile is common when the cause is something general — a stretch of bad sleep, a period of stress, a demanding few months — because those press on attention, impulse and organization all at once. One tall bar with two low ones points more specifically. Either way the honest reading is about shape, not severity.
Is there a minimum age? Can a teenager take it?
No age is asked and nothing here is scored against age norms, but the statements were written about adult life — paperwork, deadlines, long meetings. A fourteen-year-old answering them is answering about a life they do not have yet, so the profile will be thin rather than wrong. Childhood ADHD is also assessed differently, with reports from more than one setting rather than self-report alone, so a young reader should treat this page as reading material and take the actual question to a parent or a school counselor.
I scored high on everything and I am worried. What should I do with that?
Take the specific examples rather than the result. A clinician can use "I have missed three renewal deadlines this year and reread most work emails twice" and can do very little with "a website said my attention pattern was high". Write down two or three concrete incidents from the last few months, including how much they cost you, and start with a regular doctor rather than a specialist. If your mood or sleep has also changed recently, mention that first, because it changes what the examples mean.