Publication date: Jan 2020
What is already known about this subject:
- The Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, is one of the most commonly used tools for assessing traits and behaviours associated with autism in healthy, typically developing individuals.
- A strength of the scale is that it can be divided into several different subscales, such as Social Difficulty or Restricted Interests, but many researchers currently disagree on what these subscales look like, and how many subscales reliably exist.
- Furthermore, there is growing evidence to suggest that many of these subscales are relatively independent of each other (e.g. a person who shows high levels of Social Difficulty does not necessarily show high levels of Restricted Interests), which means that Total or Overall AQ scores can not be easily interpreted.
What this study adds
- We examined AQ scores collected by 1280 participants in the Raine Study at the age 20 follow-up, as well 1702 undergraduate students at the University of Western Australia, to conduct the largest assessment of the AQ subscales in an English-speaking sample to-date.
- Our analysis found that the best model of the AQ was one described by Russell-Smith and colleagues (2011) that contained a Social Skills, Details/Patterns, and Communication/Mindreading subscales. Furthermore, we found that the associations between these subscales were relatively weak, and sometimes in an opposite direction. This means that when someone has high Total AQ score, we can't say with certainty 'why' they do (because this information by itself does not tell us which subscales are contributing to a 'high' Total AQ score).
- Based on the findings of this study, we recommend that researchers using the AQ should use the subscales described by Russell-Smith and colleagues (2011). We also recommend that researchers consider using subscale scores, as these scores are more meaningful than Total AQ scores.