Not prone to false negatives is best described as which analytical property?

• A. Analytical Sensitivity
• B. Diagnostic Specificity
• C. Analytical Precision
• D. Diagnostic Accuracy

Answer: (A)

Not prone to false negatives means the test is good at identifying people who actually have the condition. That quality is called sensitivity. When we talk about analytical sensitivity, we’re focusing on the assay’s ability to detect very small amounts of the substance being measured, which directly reduces the chance of missing true positives (false negatives).

Specificity is about correctly ruling out those without the disease (avoiding false positives), not about catching all true cases. Analytical precision is about how repeatable the measurement is, not about detecting true positives. Diagnostic accuracy is the overall rate of correct results, but it doesn’t specify the balance between false negatives and false positives.