ASIM-24 Intimacy Screener

The Autistic Sexual Intimacy Measure is a free twenty-four-question self-assessment for autistic adults, and for adults who suspect they may be autistic, who want to understand how their neurotype shapes their experience of intimacy. It takes five to seven minutes. Your answers are private and your report is sent to you.

Please read this first: the ASIM-24 is still in development

This questionnaire was written in-house to support self-reflection. Its questions are based on experiences autistic adults commonly report, but unlike the other screeners on this site it has not been validated through formal scientific research. There is no published research behind its scores and no established thresholds.

We are saying that at the top rather than the bottom because it changes how you should read your result. Treat it as a set of well-chosen questions to think about, not as a measurement. It is not intended to diagnose anything and it does not replace professional evaluation. For guidance specific to you, speak with a neurodivergent-affirming clinician.

What it explores

Intimacy involves nearly everything a neurotype touches at once: sensory processing, communication, emotional recognition, the reading of another person’s signals, and the ability to say what you want and do not want while all of the above is happening.

For autistic adults that combination can make intimacy an area of real difficulty that rarely gets discussed - not because it is rare, but because there are few places to raise it. This screener asks about it directly, in plain and clinical language, across four areas.

Who it is for

Autistic adults, and adults who think they may be autistic. It is written for people in relationships and people who are not, and it does not assume any particular orientation, relationship structure, or level of experience.

You do not need a diagnosis to take it, and it will not tell you whether you are autistic. If that is the question you are actually asking, the AQ-50, the RAADS-14 and the CAT-Q are the better places to start.

The four areas

Six questions each, scored separately so you can see which area is carrying the weight.

Sexual knowledge and understanding

How well-informed you feel about bodies, sex and what actually happens between people - and how much of what you know you had to find out on your own.

Sex education is rarely designed with autistic learners in mind. It tends to rely on implication, euphemism and inference, which is precisely the register that is hardest to learn from. A gap here is usually a gap in what was made available, not in capacity.

Sensory comfort and regulation

How touch, sound, smell, light, texture and closeness feel during intimacy, and how much of your attention goes to managing them.

Sensory experience is not a detail here, it is often the whole thing. Touch that is meant to be soothing can register as painful or unbearable, and a partner may read withdrawal as rejection when what is happening is overload. Naming which specific input is the problem tends to be more useful than any general conversation about desire.

Boundaries and consent self-advocacy

How clearly you can identify what you do and do not want, and how able you feel to say so in the moment - including changing your mind partway through.

This area matters more than any other on this questionnaire. Difficulty reading implicit social cues, a learned habit of masking discomfort, and a lifetime of being told your read on a situation is wrong all make it harder to hold a boundary. Research consistently finds autistic adults receive less accessible sex education and are at higher risk of having their boundaries violated. A low score in this area is worth taking to a clinician.

Relationship communication confidence

How able you feel to talk about intimacy with a partner - before, during and afterwards.

A great deal of intimate communication is conducted through hint, pause and implication. Many autistic adults do much better with explicit conversation, and discover the difficulty was never desire or attraction but a channel that was never going to work for them.

How it is scored

Each of the four areas scores from 6 to 30, and each falls into one of three bands: high support needed, growth zone, or strong foundation.

Note that the direction runs the opposite way to most screeners. Here a higher score is the more comfortable result, and a low score points to an area where support would help. A low score is not a failing; several of these areas are low for reasons that were entirely outside anyone’s control.

What the results are for

Mostly, language. Many people finish this screener able to name something specific that had only ever been a vague sense that intimacy was harder than it seemed to be for other people.

That is worth having on its own, and it is worth having if you want to raise the subject with a partner or a therapist, because it turns an unspecified problem into four separate and much more tractable ones.

What this screener is not

It is not validated, not diagnostic, and not a substitute for professional care. It cannot tell you whether you are autistic, whether anything about your experience is unusual, or whether you need treatment. It does not assess a relationship, and it says nothing about a partner.

If any part of taking it raises something distressing, that is a good reason to speak with a qualified clinician rather than to keep going alone.

What happens after you finish

You receive your four area scores and a report by email. Nothing is shared with anyone unless you ask us to send it somewhere. If you would like to talk any of it through, you can tell us at the end and we will follow up.

Working with us

We provide adult diagnostic assessment - autism, ADHD, or both together - along with add-on evaluations for alexithymia and pathological demand avoidance. If you need 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.