Psychometric properties of the 10-item Autism Quotient in an acute psychiatric sample

Abstract

PurposeDiagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are commonly missed among psychiatric patients. As such, a brief screening tool that reliably captures ASD symptoms could help to facilitate access to diagnosis. We evaluated the factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity of the 10-item Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10; Allison et al., 2012) in a diagnostically diverse sample of patients with acute mental illness. MethodsParticipants (n = 305) were patients with a variety of mood, anxiety, personality, and psychotic-spectrum disorders seeking treatment at a cognitive-behavioral therapy partial hospital program. They completed the AQ-10 on their second day of the treatment program. ResultsResults suggests that a unifactorial structure of the AQ-10 had poor model fit and internal consistency. A modified, 5-item version (AQ-5) demonstrated acceptable unidimensional model fit and internal consistency; however, the items exclusively assess the social aspects of ASD and neglect restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, or activity, therefore limiting validity. Indeed, while the AQ-5 and the AQ-10 demonstrated similar convergent validity with measures of social functioning, the AQ-5 demonstrated poor convergent validity with overall functional impairment relative to the AQ-10. ConclusionOur findings highlight that the AQ-10 may not be well suited to assess ASD symptoms among patients with acute mental illness.