Assessing Social Identity in Autistic Individuals: Evaluating A Self-Report Questionnaire in the Netherlands.
Lisa Jg Krijnen, Ralph Ca Rippe, Sander Begeer and 1 others
PMID 41933479WHAT IT FOUND
Four separate things make up how autistic people feel about being autistic, and a 1,443-person Dutch survey backs a 14-item questionnaire that measures them.
Feeling positive about being autistic went with fewer anxiety and depression symptoms; autism being central to identity went with more.
Key findings
01The 14 questionnaire items grouped into four parts that matched the original theory: connection to other autistic people, positive feelings about being autistic, how important autism is to a person's identity, and how similar people feel to the autistic community. A second, separate half of the sample confirmed that four-part structure.
02The questionnaire behaved the same way for men, women and gender-diverse people, and across age, education level, ethnicity and level of autism traits, so scores can be compared between these groups.
03Small associations only: people who felt more positive about being autistic reported fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, while those for whom autism was central to their identity reported more anxiety and depression symptoms.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The confirmatory fit was borderline against the study's own targets: the authors set out to see a comparative fit index above 0.95 and a root mean square error of approximation below 0.08, and the results were 0.93 and 0.09. Everyone was measured at a single point in time, so the links between social identity and mental health cannot show which came first. Participants were largely Dutch, and highly educated and highly intelligent people were overrepresented, so the results may not apply to the wider autistic population. The Dutch translation mixed person-first and identity-first wording, so some items did not match everyone's preferred language. Intelligence level was self-estimated when no test score was available. The authors say further validation is still needed, including whether scores stay stable over time and how the questionnaire relates to measures of other, different concepts. All the associations with demographics, autism traits and mental health were small in size.
Declared interests
The research was funded by a Starter Grant made available through funding from the Dutch government (Rijksoverheid). The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The data come from the Netherlands Autism Register.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the mental health links as evidence that identity work improves mental health. Everything was measured at one time point, all the associations were small, and no treatment or support programme was tested.
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