In a specificity assessment, if 100 patients with no disease are tested and 94 return negative results, what is the specificity percentage?

To determine the specificity percentage, you need to understand the concept of specificity in the context of diagnostic testing. Specificity measures the proportion of true negatives — patients without the disease who are correctly identified as not having it — among all those who do not have the disease.

In the scenario described, 100 patients without the disease were tested, and 94 returned negative results. This means that 94 patients were correctly identified as not having the disease, which represents the true negatives.

The specificity can be calculated using the formula:

[ \text{Specificity} = \frac{\text{True Negatives}}{\text{True Negatives} + \text{False Positives}} ]

Since there are no patients with the disease in this assessment, the number of false positives is zero. Therefore, the formula simplifies to:

[ \text{Specificity} = \frac{94}{94 + 0} = \frac{94}{94} = 1 \text{ or } 100% ]

This indicates that 100% of patients who do not have the disease are correctly identified as such, which leads to the conclusion that the specificity of the test is 100%.