Free assessments that can be done at home
Information is power. These assessments can help you in your journey.
With access to care becoming more and more limited, people are turning to the internet for help in their diagnosis journey. If you’re searching for answers for yourself, or for a loved one, online assessments can be helpful in starting conversations with care providers, schools, and so on.
Here, I’ve collected some of the more popular ones. I use these in my practice quite often.
Most popular free ASD screening tests:
AQ-10 - Short Autism Quotient (scores over 6 indicate a possibility of autism)
AQ - Autism Quotient (scores over 26 indicate a possibility of autism)
SQ - Systemizing Quotient - Revised (scores over 75 indicate a possibility of autism)
The Aspie Quiz (You are very likely to be neurodiverse if your Aspie score was at least 35 points higher than your neurotypical score)
RBQ-2A - Repetitive Behaviours Questionnaire (scores over 26 indicate a possibility of autism)
CAT-Q - Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (Scores above 100 are indicative of greater camouflaging / masking)
RAADS-R - Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale–Revised (scores over 65 indicate a possibility of autism)
Additional helpful screening tests:
TAS-20 - Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Scores above 61 are indicative of alexithymia)
OAQ - Online Alexithymia Questionnaire (Scores above 113 are indicative of alexithymia)
TEQ - Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (Scores above 45 are indicative of above average empathy levels)
EQ - The Empathy Quotient (Scores below 30 are indicative of subject likely being autistic)
EDA-QA - Extreme Demand Avoidance Questionnaire (Although a threshold has not been established, scores greater than 45 indicate a high risk of showing features of PDA)
ASRS-5 - ADHD Self-Report Scale for DSM-V (Scores above 14 are indicative of ADHD)
VIA - VIA Inventory of Strengths (On the VIA, you don’t get any scores, but rather a ranking of your 24 character strengths, from strongest to weakest)
Big 5 - The Big Five Inventory-A
ESQ - Executive Skills Questionnaire
VAS - Vulnerable Attachment Style Questionnaire
Many thanks go to Toronto’s Embrace Autism for operationalizing these assessment instruments and making them available to the public for free. They have been a great resource to the autistic community. What I really appreciate about their presentation of these instruments is the links to the references - the “evidence” about if and how these instruments work.
Check it out and let me know what you think. I can say, from my end, the instruments confirm what my care team and I already know … I’ve very autistic. ;)