Assessments / CAT-Q

CAT-Q camouflaging questionnaire Pro

Twenty-five statements about the work you might do to get through social situations: copying, scripting, monitoring your face, pushing yourself to fit in. It takes about seven minutes.

• 25 questions
• 7 min about
• $14.99 one-time, with Pro
• 0 answers uploaded

What it measures

The Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire measures social camouflaging, the strategies people use to hide or compensate for autistic traits. It has three parts: compensation (learned strategies to make up for social difficulty), masking (hiding your natural responses), and assimilation (forcing yourself to fit in).

Who it is for

Adults, autistic or not, who want to understand how much effort they put into social situations. It is especially useful for people who suspect masking is why short screeners missed them.

How long it takes

About 7 minutes for 25 questions. You can stop and come back: your answers so far are saved in this browser.

How it is scored

Each statement is rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Five statements are worded the other way round and score in reverse.

The total runs from 25 to 175, with a score for each of the three parts. Higher scores mean more camouflaging.

The questionnaire’s authors published no clinical cutoff. Unmasked uses 100 as a reference point, and describes 80 and 124 as moderate and very high levels.

What it cannot tell you

• It measures camouflaging, not autism. Non-autistic people camouflage too, and a high score does not mean you are autistic.
• Some people camouflage so automatically that they do not notice they do it, and can under-report.
• There is no validated cutoff, so the bands are descriptions, not categories.

Screening, not diagnosis. Your result describes your answers. Only a qualified professional can diagnose autism, ADHD or a mental health condition.

Sources

1. Hull L, Mandy W, Lai M-C, Baron-Cohen S, Allison C, Smith P, Petrides KV (2019). Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), 819–833. Published under CC BY 4.0. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6
2. Hull L, Petrides KV, Allison C, et al. (2017). "Putting on my best normal": social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47, 2519–2534. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5

The CAT-Q items are reproduced from Hull et al. (2019), Online Appendix 1, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Answer labels are shown in full; no items were changed.