The prevalence of ADHD: a literature review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v29i2.1031Abstract
This article presents the main methodological characteristics and the results reported by the studies of the prevalence of ADHD through the articles published in the 2003-2014. We performed a search on one of the major health care databases, PubMed / MEDLINE which resulted in 23 articles. We investigated the prevalence estimates; the sampling process; the type of study; the diagnostic criteria; and the main variables explored. The mining process was carried out by the programs: EXCEL; NVivo-10, SPSS 20; and Mendeley. Results: We observed the central average of 11.26% and among estimates of prevalence found; 99% of the studies were cross-sectional; and the most widely used sampling process was the probabilistic for convenience in 26.08% of the studies. Conclusion: The results support the premise that the methodological criteria and diagnoses, increased the variability of estimates of prevalence globally.