AQ-50 Autism Screener - the Autism-Spectrum Quotient

A free fifty-question autism screener for adults, taking about ten minutes. It measures how many autistic traits you experience across fifty everyday statements. Your answers are private, and your score report is sent to you by email.

What the AQ is

The Autism-Spectrum Quotient was developed at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues, and published in 2001. It is the most widely used adult autism self-screening questionnaire in the world, and it is the one most people meet first.

It does not ask whether you are autistic. It asks fifty ordinary questions about how you prefer to spend time, what you notice, what you find easy and what you find draining - and counts how many of your answers point in an autistic direction. Each item scores 0 or 1, so the total runs from 0 to 50.

The five areas it measures

The fifty items divide evenly into five domains of ten questions each.

Social skill

How comfortable and how effortful you find social situations - meeting new people, making small talk, working out the unwritten rules of a group.

Attention switching

How easily you move your attention from one thing to another, and how you respond when an activity is interrupted or a plan changes partway through.

Attention to detail

How readily you notice small patterns, numbers, sounds and details that other people pass over. This is the domain where autistic people most often score high and where the score reads as a strength rather than a difficulty.

Communication

How conversation works for you - reading intention and subtext, knowing when it is your turn, and telling whether someone is bored or uncomfortable.

Imagination

How you engage with fiction, pretend play and other people’s perspectives. This is the most criticised of the five domains, because low scores here are often about a preference for factual interests rather than any lack of imaginative capacity - many autistic people are highly imaginative.

Who it is for

Adults who suspect they may be autistic and want a first structured look at it. It is often the starting point before deciding whether to pursue a formal assessment.

At fifty questions it is longer than most screeners, which is the trade-off: it takes ten minutes rather than three, and in return it gives you a picture spread across five areas rather than a single number.

How it is scored

Your total runs from 0 to 50 and falls into one of four ranges.

Low range - 0 to 13

Few autistic traits detected. This is the range most non-autistic adults fall in.

Mild range - 14 to 25

Some autistic traits are present, but below the threshold usually used for clinical screening.

Moderate range - 26 to 31

A notable number of autistic traits. Twenty-six is the score several later studies have suggested as the better cut-off when the AQ is used to decide who should be assessed, because it misses fewer autistic people than the higher figure does.

High range - 32 to 50

A high number of autistic traits, at or above the threshold used in the original research.

What the score of 32 actually means

The figure of 32 comes from the original 2001 study, in which 46 of the 58 autistic adults tested - 79.3 per cent - scored 32 or above, compared with around 2 per cent of the non-autistic control group.

Two things follow from that, and both matter more than the number itself.

It was never a diagnostic threshold. It was the point that best separated two groups in one study of 58 people. Roughly one in five of the autistic adults in that same study scored below it.

It works less well the further you get from that sample. The AQ does not cleanly separate autism from social anxiety, and it performs differently for men and women - autistic women who have spent years learning to pass tend to score lower than their experience would suggest, because most of these fifty items ask about behaviour that masking is specifically designed to adjust.

If you scored below 32, or below 26, and still recognise yourself strongly in autistic experience, that recognition is data too. A screener that misses one in five of the people it was built on is not a reason to stop asking the question.

What this screener is not

This assessment is for information and self-reflection only. It is not a diagnostic tool and does not replace professional medical or psychological advice. A high score is a reason to look further, not a diagnosis. A low score is not a discharge.

A full autism assessment weighs developmental history, current functioning, context and the alternative explanations that no self-report questionnaire can rule out.

What happens after you finish

You receive your score and a report by email. Nothing is shared with anyone else unless you ask us to send it somewhere. If you would like to talk the result through, or want to know what a formal assessment involves, you can tell us at the end and we will follow up.

If you would like a second reading before deciding anything, the RAADS-14 screener takes three minutes and approaches the same question from a different angle.

If you want a formal assessment

We provide adult diagnostic assessment. You can read about the autism assessment, the ADHD assessment, or the dual assessment for both. There are also add-on evaluations for alexithymia and pathological demand avoidance.

If what you need is documentation rather than a diagnosis, our page on neuroaffirming accommodations explains that process. You can also meet the clinicians, read our frequently asked questions, or browse the rest of our free tools on the self-discovery page.

About Adult Autism Assessment

We assess and support neurodivergent adults - people seeking a first diagnosis in adulthood, people who have known for years and want documentation, and people who are still working out what fits. Our approach is neurodiversity-affirming: an assessment here is about accurate self-understanding and practical accommodation, not about finding out what is wrong with you.

Adult Autism Assessment is part of New Path Family of Therapy Centers, Inc.