CAT-Q Camouflaging Screener

A free twenty-five-question screener measuring how much you camouflage in social situations. It takes about five minutes, it is for adults sixteen and over, and your score report is private and sent to you by email.

What camouflaging is

Camouflaging - often called masking - is the work of appearing less autistic than you are. Rehearsing conversations before they happen. Copying someone else’s gestures. Forcing eye contact that hurts. Learning jokes and phrases to have ready. Monitoring your own face while trying to follow what somebody is saying.

Some of it is deliberate and some of it became automatic so long ago that it no longer feels like effort until it stops. It is not dishonesty and it is not a social skill someone chose to acquire. For most autistic adults it is a survival strategy learned young, usually after being punished in some way for not doing it.

It also works, which is the problem. Camouflaging is the reason a great many autistic adults reach thirty, forty or fifty without anyone - including them - having any idea.

What the CAT-Q is

The Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire was developed by Laura Hull and colleagues at University College London and Cambridge, and published in 2019. It was the first properly validated way to measure camouflaging as a thing in its own right rather than inferring it.

Twenty-five statements, each rated on a seven-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, giving a total between 25 and 175. The items split across three dimensions, which are scored separately as well as together.

Who it is for

Adults sixteen and over. It is designed in part to identify autistic people who do not currently meet diagnostic criteria on standard measures precisely because they are so good at masking.

You do not need a diagnosis to take it, and a diagnosis is not what it produces. Many people take it because a different screener came back low and the result did not match their life.

The three dimensions

Compensation

Scored 9 to 63. Actively working around social difficulty - using strategies to compensate for things that do not come automatically.

This is the rehearsed conversation, the studied body language, the phrases copied from films or from a colleague who seems to find this easy. It is the most effortful of the three and often the most conscious.

Masking

Scored 8 to 56. Actively hiding autistic characteristics so that other people do not see them.

Suppressing stimming, holding eye contact past the point of discomfort, controlling your face and voice, and keeping the appearance of ease while managing something the other person cannot see.

Assimilation

Scored 8 to 56. Trying to fit in with people around you, often at the cost of feeling like yourself.

This is the dimension most closely linked to distress in the research. It includes the sense of performing rather than participating, of being in a group and feeling like an outsider inside it, and of not fully knowing who you would be without the performance.

How it is scored

You get a total out of 175 and a separate score for each of the three dimensions, each placed in a low, mild, moderate or high band.

A total around 100 is the figure most often used as the point above which camouflaging is considered high. It is a useful marker rather than a diagnostic line - the questionnaire’s authors did not publish it as a cut-off, and there is no score that confirms or excludes anything.

The three dimension scores usually tell you more than the total does. High compensation with low assimilation is a different situation from the reverse: the first is a lot of effort that is working, the second is effort that has stopped feeling like it belongs to you.

What a high score means

A high score means you are doing a large amount of unpaid, invisible work in order to move through ordinary social life. That is worth naming on its own terms, separately from any question about diagnosis.

Sustained camouflaging has been consistently associated in the research with exhaustion, anxiety, depression and autistic burnout. The assimilation dimension in particular tracks with poorer mental health. If your score is high, the useful question is usually not whether you can mask better but where you are allowed to stop.

If a different screener came back low

This is the screener that addresses the blind spot in the others.

The AQ-50 and the RAADS-14 both ask about observable social behaviour. Camouflaging is the skill of adjusting exactly that behaviour, so someone who has spent decades masking can answer both honestly and score below the threshold. The screener is not wrong; it is measuring the surface, and the surface has been deliberately maintained.

A low AQ or RAADS score alongside a high CAT-Q score is a recognised and informative combination. In Hull’s research, autistic women scored significantly higher on camouflaging than autistic men, while no such difference appeared among non-autistic adults - which is part of why autistic women are so often identified late, or not at all.

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. It helps you understand your experience; it does not provide a formal mental health diagnosis.

It also does not measure autism. It measures camouflaging, which non-autistic people do too - particularly people with social anxiety. A high score says something real is being carried. It does not by itself say what.

What happens after you finish

You receive your total, your three dimension 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 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 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.