I am not sure if there is a stand-alone term to describe variation in prevalence depending on the number of criteria a person fulfills, considering from an epidemiological perspective, there are basically two types of prevalence- Point- and Period prevalence, and that prevalence figures for a country/geographical region may vary  across national, regional, state and districts. However, in your situation If I understand that you are trying to describe prevalence given two different diagnostic criteria; I would suggest establishing/calculating a Confidence Interval (CI) for each criteria for comparison if prevalence values fall within the confidence ranges or established standards from current or previous studies. Hope this helps.

Thanks so much for your response Amobi, I'm doing a lit review and need to discuss taxonomy controversies in a particular diagnostic entity, i.e., premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The interesting finding is that depending on the number of criteria chosen for the DSM diagnosis, prevalence rates would vary significantly, almost doubling by removing 1 required symptom from the list of DSM symptomology. While I can describe this diagnostic validity issue using lost of words, I was wondering if there is a technical term to describe this problem/issue. So far I haven't encountered one in the bibliography.

Thanks a lot for your helpful input!

Eleni

I have seen the term "florid" used to describe a condition where a client's presentation of a condition or disorder meets all of the diagnostic criteria.  I suppose this term suggests that the disorder is "in full bloom."  So, you might consider using a term such as "degree of floridity" to describe variations in the number of symptoms present in a given client.  

Thank you all so much for all these helpful suggestions. Yes, Ruchira, that's exactly the thinking behind my question. That being said, I just want to describe the phenomenon for a review paper, and not necessarily make an argument for "distorting" phenomenology and reducing number of criteria. As you suggest, I want to highlight the arbitrariness of # of criteria in DSM taxonomy. I hope this answer your question Renzo. 

Sure, Renzo, agreed, especially for disorders being around for decades, but perhaps less so for newly established diagnoses, as in the case of PMDD. That being said, my intention is to just describe the phenomenon of variability in prevalence depending on # of criteria, rather than arguing for or against DSM taxonomy. Thanks for your very helpful insight.