Which statement describes a test with high sensitivity and low specificity?

• A. It will have few false negatives.
• B. It will have few false positives.
• C. It will have both high positive predictive value and high negative predictive value.
• D. It will correctly identify most diseased individuals but produce many false positives.

Answer: (D)

High sensitivity means a test catches most people who have the disease, resulting in few false negatives. Low specificity means the test also flags many people without the disease as positive, producing many false positives. So a test described as correctly identifying most diseased individuals but producing many false positives fits a high-sensitivity, low-specificity profile. The other statements don’t capture that trade-off: focusing only on few false negatives describes sensitivity without acknowledging the many false positives, claiming few false positives points to high specificity, and asserting very high predictive values implies good performance in both sensitivity and specificity.