The distribution of autistic traits across the autism spectrum: evidence for discontinuous dimensional subpopulations underlying the autism continuum.

The sample was collected online as a convenience sample, so it may not represent all autistic or neurotypical adults. Autism diagnoses were self-reported and not clinically verified. Some people in the neurotypical group may have been clinically autistic but undiagnosed. Only the AQ was used, so the result depends on a self-report measure. Females were overrepresented in both the autistic and neurotypical groups. The enriched sample had far more autistic people than the general population, so its cutoff may not apply to a general population. The prevalence-true sample was created by resampling the enriched data, not by recruiting a population sample. The model was limited to two components, so it may not capture all subgroups. The authors state that the findings should not be used to choose a fixed cutoff.

The article lists funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative. No other conflict-of-interest statement is included in the supplied text.

Do not use these AQ cutoff scores as diagnostic thresholds. The study did not evaluate diagnostic properties, diagnoses were self-reported, and the cutoff changed with sex and sample prevalence.