Psychometric Evaluation of Two Adult Autism Screening Tools in Brazil.
Louise do Nascimento Marques, Christopher Murray, Lucas Fortaleza and 2 others
PMID 40686440WHAT IT FOUND
Two Brazilian adult autism questionnaires, including a women-specific version, tracked AQ-10 scores and self-reported autism, but they are not yet diagnostic tools.
Key findings
01Both screens split into four factors: SfA-A captured social communication, social interaction, sensory sensitivity, and repetitive patterns; SfA-F captured camouflage compensation, gender-related interests, camouflage masking, and sensory sensitivity.
02Total scores on the SfA-A correlated with AQ-10 scores at r = 0.73, and total scores on the SfA-F correlated with AQ-10 scores at r = 0.68.
03The authors proposed that scores at or above the 60th percentile are suggestive of autistic traits, while lower scores suggest a lower likelihood of ASD.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Recruitment was online through Instagram and snowball sharing, so the sample may overrepresent people interested in autism, urban residents, highly educated people, and people with internet access. The study used self-reported diagnoses and AQ-10 scores as comparison measures, not clinical confirmation of autism. The authors state that sensitivity and specificity still need validation, so the tools are not yet proven for diagnostic accuracy. The female sample size is reported inconsistently: 7738 in the sample description and 7850 in the norms table. The SfA-A has 75 items and the SfA-F has 34 items, which may cause fatigue or incomplete responses.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat a high score as a diagnosis or a low score as proof that autism is absent. The study did not compare the questionnaires with clinical diagnostic assessment, and the authors say further sensitivity and specificity validation is needed.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →