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Specificity

  • Measure of a test’s ability to correctly identify people who do not have the disease
  • Sensitivity and specificity are inversely proportional: when sensitivity increases, specificity decreases and vice versa
  • Example: 

A specificity of 95.0% in mammography screening means that 95.0% of the women tested are correctly identified as not having a tumor.

Further information:  Understanding and using sensitivity, specificity and predictive values

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