AtlasAutismCamouflaging Self-Check (CAT-Q)

Autism traits self-checks, not a diagnosis

Camouflaging Self-Check (CAT-Q) — Not an Autism Test

The 25 published CAT-Q statements, reproduced in full under CC BY 4.0. Free, no sign-up, about 8 minutes, three separate meters, no total score and no cut-off.

  • Free, no account
  • 25 items · 8 min
  • Answers stay in this tab
  • No fixed type, no norm

What this assessment measures

This page asks the 25 published Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire statements. It reports the authors' three subscales one by one. Compensation is strategies learned to get through social situations. Masking is managing how your face and body appear. Assimilation is the effort of fitting in. It cannot tell you whether you are autistic. It gives no total score and no cut-off.

What this test looks at

  • Compensation · 9 statements
  • Masking · 8 statements
  • Assimilation · 8 statements
Time
8 minutes
Items
25
Result
attainable-range pattern summary
Source
The 25 published CAT-Q items of Hull, Mandy, Lai, Baron-Cohen, Allison, Smith and Petrides (2019), verbatim under CC BY 4.0; changed here to a 5-point scale, no total.
Material limit

The published questionnaire uses a 7-point agree scale. This page uses the site's 5-point scale. So the published total, and the comparison values that go with it, are not shown here and would not mean the same thing if they were. There is no total, no cut-off and no comparison group. Camouflaging is described by autistic and non-autistic people alike. The questionnaire was not built to decide who is autistic.

This route calculates its result in this browser tab; answers and result text are not sent as analytics properties or written to browser storage.

Use the result

Why this route is different

Most sites that host this questionnaire hand you a number and a threshold. This page does the opposite. The items are the authors' own, in their own published order, credited and licensed. The three subscales stay apart, so you can see which kind of effort is doing the work rather than how high one figure went.

A small next step

Take the one statement you agreed with most strongly and watch it for a week. After each social event, write a single line: what you did, and how long you needed before you felt like yourself again. Seven lines will show the cost of the effort better than any meter can. It is also the kind of example an appointment can use.

Questions people ask

Is the CAT-Q an autism test?

No. It measures camouflaging behaviour, which autistic and non-autistic people both describe. Its authors built it to measure that behaviour, not to identify autistic people. Only a qualified clinician can assess autism.

Why is there no CAT-Q score or cut-off on this page?

The published scoring is built on a 7-point agree scale, and this site uses a 5-point scale. A total worked out here would not be the authors' total. Rather than print a number that looks official and is not, the page shows the three subscales on their own and no total at all.

Are these the real CAT-Q items?

Yes. All 25 are reproduced word for word in their published order, with the authors' own subscale assignment and the five reverse-scored items kept reversed. The paper is open access under CC BY 4.0 and is linked below.

What is the difference between compensation, masking and assimilation?

Compensation is the strategies you learned and use on purpose. Masking is managing how you appear while an interaction is running. Assimilation is the sense of performing rather than being yourself. They are reported apart because they can move independently.

Are my answers stored or sent anywhere?

No. The result is calculated in this browser tab. Answers and result text are never sent as analytics properties and are never written to browser storage.

Source and method boundary

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The result remains this site’s transparent attainable-range summary; the source does not validate this browser administration or add population norms.

See the source manifest · Read the scoring method