CAT-Q
ValidatedCamouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q)
16+ yearsSelf~6 min25 questions
Please read each statement below and choose the answer that best fits your experiences during social interactions.
Report details · optional
Shown on the report and stored with the screening record. Use initials or a code, not full names.
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About this screener — evidence, source
Measures how much a person camouflages in social situations: compensating for social difficulties, masking autistic characteristics, and assimilating to fit in. Items are rated 1–7 (total 25–175). Useful when someone’s presentation seems less autistic than their account of daily life, which is common in women and late-diagnosed adults. It has no diagnostic cut-off.
Evidence · validated
Developed with 354 autistic and 478 non-autistic adults aged 16–82. A three-factor structure (compensation, masking, assimilation) showed good fit and measurement invariance across gender and diagnostic group; internal consistency α = .94 and preliminary test–retest r = .77. Autistic adults scored higher (mean item score 4.79 vs 3.48 in the exploratory subsample). No cut-off has been published, so the total is reported without bands.
Source & licence
Hull L, Mandy W, Lai M-C, Baron-Cohen S, Allison C, Smith P, Petrides KV. Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). J Autism Dev Disord. 2019;49(3):819–833. doi:10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6
Licence: Published as Online Appendix 1 of an open-access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0)
Reproduced unmodified with attribution to Hull et al. (2019). The authors note its clinical utility requires further research.
Official source ↗