Relationship of the Wender Utah Rating Scale to objective measures of attention

Abstract 

The Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) is a 25-item self-report questionnaire for the retrospective assessment of childhood attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms; high scores indicate greater symptoms. The current study used 35 male Veterans Affairs outpatients to determine if WURS scores were associated with objective measures of current attentional functioning, including the Trail Making Test, Gordon Diagnostic System, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised digit span and digit symbol subtests, and Wechsler Memory Scale–Revised mental control subtest. Participants included both adults diagnosed with ADHD (n = 14) and non-ADHD adults (n = 21). After Bonferroni correction, Pearson product moment correlation coefficients revealed that greater symptoms on the WURS were associated with poorer digit symbol performance (r = −0.69, P < .05). To determine which indices best predicted WURS scores, scores on attention tests and demographic variables were entered into a stepwise multiple regression analysis. Digit symbol performance was the only significant predictor of WURS scores (R² = 0.59, P < .01). Thus, poor performance on a sensitive, but nonspecific, measure of attention with executive function, response speed, and visuomotor coordination components was related to greater self-report of childhood ADHD symptoms.