A new screening test has been devised to detect early stages of prostate cancer. The test has been found to be positive in a high number of patients who are later discovered not to have the cancer on other more definitive testing methods. What is the correct term to describe this test?
A. High true positive rate
B. High false positive rate
C. High true negative rate
D. High false negative rate
E. High specificity
The easiest way to remember this is using the following definitions.
True positive is the amount of sick people correctly identified as sick False positives is the amount of healthy people incorrectly identified as sick True negative is the healthy people correctly identified as healthy False negative is the sick people incorrectly identified as healthy
High sensitivity means few false negatives Low sensitivity means many false negatives High specificity means few false positives Low specificity means many false positives