Screening practice exercise (solutions)

Your boss has just developed a new screening test for a disease and you are in charge of testing
its validity. You decide to evaluate the test on 1000 individuals 300 who have had diagnoses of
the disease and 700 who have been found not to have the disease The screening test gave a
positive result for 292 individuals. 285 of these individuals actually had the disease.

a) Fill in all cells of the two by two table.

Diagnosis of Disease
Total
Yes No
Screening Test

Positive 285 7 292

Results of

Negative 15 693 708

Total 300 700 1,000

b. Calculate the sensitivity of the new screening test.

a/ a+ c = 285/300 = 95%

c. Interpret the results of sensitivity calculation in one sentence.

The test is able to identify 95% of those with the disease.

d. Calculate the specificity of the new screening test.

d / b+d = 693/700 = 99%

e. Interpret the results of specificity calculation in one sentence.

The test is able to correctly classify (as negative) 99% of those without the disease.

f. Calculate the Probability of a false positive and interpret the results in a statement.
b / a+b = 7 / 292 = 2.4%; only 2.4% of those who showed positive results on the
screening did not actually have the disease.

g. Calculate the probability of a false negative and interpret the results in a statement.
c/c+d = 15/708 = 2.12%; only 2.12% of those who showed negative results on the
screeing actually had the disease.