"Am I Autistic?": What the AQ, RAADS-R and CAT-Q Online Tests Actually Measure

"Am I autistic?" is one of the most repeated searches on the internet, and it almost always leads to the same place: a free questionnaire. It's worth understanding what those questionnaires are before letting them decide how you see yourself. WHAT A SCREENING TEST IS A screening test doesn't diagnose: it estimates whether a clinical assessment is worth pursuing. It's designed to miss as few people as possible, so it produces plenty of false positives, especially in people with anxiety, ADHD, or a trauma history. AQ (AUTISM SPECTRUM QUOTIENT) Fifty questions, scored 0 to 50. It measures social skill, attention to detail, attention switching, communication, and imagination. A score of 32 or above is considered indicative, but the AQ is old, was validated mostly on men, and barely accounts for camouflaging. Treat it as general orientation, not a verdict. RAADS-R Eighty items that explicitly ask how you were as a child and how you are now. It covers language, sensory processing, social relatedness, and circumscribed interests. It usually detects adults and women better than the AQ, with a common cut-off around 65. Its weakness: it depends on good autobiographical memory. CAT-Q Measures camouflaging: compensation, masking, and assimilation. It doesn't say whether you're autistic, but it explains how someone can be autistic and still appear perfectly sociable for twenty years. It's especially revealing for women and late-diagnosed adults. OTHERS YOU'LL SEE The RBQ-2A measures repetitive behaviours; the "reading the mind in the eyes" test measures mental-state inference and is popular but poorly specific; sensory questionnaires help describe a profile but don't diagnose. HOW TO READ YOUR SCORE HONESTLY Answer as you are when nobody is watching, not as you manage to behave at work. Many adults score low because they answer as their camouflaged self. Look at the pattern, not the number. Scoring high only on sensory items and low on everything else points elsewhere. What matters is a broad, coherent pattern present since childhood. Distrust five-question tests with instant results and apps that hand you a dramatic percentage. They aren't validated. WHAT TO DO WITH THE RESULT If you score above the cut-off you are not "officially autistic," but you do have enough reason to seek an assessment with a clinician experienced in adults. If you score below yet have recognised yourself in the descriptions for years, the test doesn't invalidate your experience: these questionnaires fail precisely with the people who compensate best. THE MOST USEFUL INTERMEDIATE STEP Before the appointment, collect real data for three or four weeks: daily energy level, situations that overload you, how long you need to recover from a social event, which sensory inputs you avoid. That log is worth more than any score, and it's exactly what a clinician needs. You can keep it in AutismDock's mood tracker and export it. THE BOTTOM LINE Online tests are a compass, not a map. Use them to decide whether to take the next step, not to close the question.