Adult Autism Self-Inventory Methodology

The Adult Autism Self-Inventory (LBL-AAS) is a LifeByLogic-original 12-item educational self-inventory on adult autism patterns. It produces four sub-construct scores, a single composite total in the range 0–48, a four-band classification, and a six-lens profile that maps the user’s response shape across the construct framework. It is not a diagnostic instrument — only a comprehensive evaluation by a qualified clinician can diagnose autism — and it is not a research-validated screen. It is positioned and labelled throughout as an educational self-inventory.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized in DSM-5 by persistent differences in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts (Criterion A) and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities (Criterion B), with onset in early developmental period (Criterion C) and clinically significant functional impact (Criterion D). The LBL-AAS’s four constructs correspond to features relevant to Criteria A and B (social-cognitive, sensory, routine, focus) but do not directly assess developmental onset or functional impact, both of which require clinical interview and history-taking. The self-inventory’s present-tense response scale further separates it from any developmental-onset assessment.

What the four constructs map onto

The four constructs — Social-Cognitive Processing, Sensory and Environmental Sensitivity, Cognitive Style and Routine, and Interest Depth and Focus — were chosen because adult-autism research consistently identifies these four areas as the most reported across adult presentations. Each construct’s grounding in the peer-reviewed literature is documented in section vii. Each construct is operationalized through three LifeByLogic-original items written for present-tense adult experience, never derived from existing instruments.

The decision to publish the LBL-AAS as an educational self-inventory — rather than as a research-validated screen — was deliberate. Three considerations shaped this positioning, and each is documented transparently here.

The validation gap

Psychometric validation of a self-report instrument requires substantial population sampling (typically n > 300 across multiple groups), confirmatory factor analysis, sensitivity / specificity studies against clinical diagnosis, and test-retest stability work. None of this has been performed for the LBL-AAS’s items, scoring, bands, or lens system. Calling the instrument a "screen" without that work would misrepresent its evidence base. Calling it a "self-inventory" accurately conveys what it is: a structured framework for noticing patterns, with full transparency about its limits.

The RAADS-14 already exists

The RAADS-14 (Eriksson et al., 2013) is published openly under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, has 97% sensitivity at the published cutoff of 14, and has been validated across autism, psychiatric, and non-psychiatric samples. If the goal is a validated adult autism screen, the RAADS-14 is already the right tool, openly available in the published paper itself. LifeByLogic’s adult autism instrument is the Adult Autism Self-Inventory — an educational construct map with a lens-profile interpretation that the RAADS-14 does not provide. The two are not interchangeable; the LBL-AAS does not screen for autism, and the RAADS-14 does not map response patterns onto interpretive lenses.

The educational framework the LBL-AAS adds

The LBL-AAS contributes three things the RAADS-14 does not. First, a four-construct framework that includes interest depth and focus — a dimension dropped from the RAADS-14 when condensing the 80-item RAADS-R into the brief 14-item form. Second, an equal-weight construct contribution (3 items per construct, all weighted equally) which the RAADS-14’s unequal subscale lengths (7 / 4 / 3) do not provide. Third, a lens-profile system based on construct salience that gives users an interpretation of the shape of their response, not just its magnitude.

The two tools are complementary, not competitive. Users seeking a validated screen take the RAADS-14. Users seeking an educational construct map take the LBL-AAS. Many users will find both informative.

The LBL-AAS contains 12 items organized into 4 constructs of 3 items each. Each item is rated on a 5-point present-tense Likert scale ranging from 0 ("Doesn’t fit — this doesn’t describe me") to 4 ("Strongly fits — this describes me well, in present-day life"), with a true midpoint at 2 ("Somewhat — half-true; depends on the day or situation"). No item is reverse-scored. Total scores range from 0 to 48.

The full item set

The 12 items are reproduced verbatim below, grouped by construct. All items are LifeByLogic-original; no item has verbatim or close-paraphrase correspondence to any item in the RAADS-14, RAADS-R, AQ, AQ-10, EQ, SQ, CAT-Q, RBQ-2A, AdAS, GSQ, or SPQ instruments.

Item-construct mapping

Each construct contains exactly 3 items, each contributing a maximum of 4 points, for a per-construct maximum of 12. Total maximum is 48 (12 × 4 constructs). Equal-weight construct contribution is one of the structural decisions that distinguishes the LBL-AAS from the RAADS-14’s unequal subscale lengths.

Response scale

The 5-point present-tense Likert scale was chosen for two reasons. First, the true midpoint at 2 ("Somewhat — half-true") gives adults who have spent years adapting room to mark "it depends on the day" honestly, rather than forcing a binary that masking can distort (Hull et al., 2017). Second, the present-tense framing avoids the contested age-of-onset question and makes the self-inventory appropriate for adults whose memory of childhood patterns is uncertain — which Hull et al. (2017) document is common in late-diagnosed adults.

Scoring proceeds in four steps: per-item value retrieval (no transformation, since no items are reverse-scored), per-construct summation, total summation, and band/lens assignment. The full pseudocode is below.

// Inputs: responses[S1, S2, S3, E1, E2, E3, R1, R2, R3, F1, F2, F3]
// Each response in {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}
// No items are reverse-scored

const SOCIAL  = [S1, S2, S3]
const SENSORY = [E1, E2, E3]
const ROUTINE = [R1, R2, R3]
const FOCUS   = [F1, F2, F3]

function construct_score(items):
    return sum([responses[i] for i in items])

// Compute four construct scores (each 0..12)
social_score  = construct_score(SOCIAL)
sensory_score = construct_score(SENSORY)
routine_score = construct_score(ROUTINE)
focus_score   = construct_score(FOCUS)

// Total = sum of four construct scores (range 0..48)
total = social_score + sensory_score + routine_score + focus_score

// Self-Inventory band (LBL-original; proportional to max)
function band(total):
    if total <= 11: return 1   // "A few patterns resonated"
    if total <= 23: return 2   // "Some patterns resonated"
    if total <= 35: return 3   // "A pronounced pattern resonated"
    return 4                  // "A strongly pronounced pattern resonated"

// Lens profile via salience-fraction routing
function lens(total, social, sensory, routine, focus):
    if total < 12:
        return "even-mirror"

    denom = total
    sal_social  = social  / denom
    sal_sensory = sensory / denom
    sal_routine = routine / denom
    sal_focus   = focus   / denom

    max_sal = max(sal_social, sal_sensory, sal_routine, sal_focus)

    // If no construct exceeds 0.35 salience, response is composite
    if max_sal <= 0.35:
        return "composite"

    // Otherwise, first-match-wins by construct order (deterministic on ties)
    if sal_social  == max_sal: return "social-reading"
    if sal_sensory == max_sal: return "sensory-tuned"
    if sal_routine == max_sal: return "pattern-routine"
    if sal_focus   == max_sal: return "focus-depth"

    return "composite"  // unreachable; defensive default
  

Why no transformation is applied

The RAADS-14 includes one reverse-scored item (item 6, "I can chat and make small talk with people") because it is the only item worded in the neurotypical direction. The LBL-AAS was constructed without any neurotypical-direction items, so no reverse transformation is needed. This choice was made to keep the scoring transparent and to avoid the cognitive load of reverse-scored items, which research on Likert response sets suggests can increase measurement noise.

Why equal weighting across constructs

Each construct contributes a maximum of 12 points to the 48-point total. Equal weighting was chosen to ensure that no single construct can determine the total score — a design principle that supports the lens-profile system, which interprets the shape of the response (which construct dominates) as well as its magnitude. The RAADS-14’s unequal subscale lengths (7 / 4 / 3 items) make Mentalizing the dominant contributor by structural design; the LBL-AAS removes that structural bias.

The four self-inventory bands divide the 0–48 range into educational categories that describe pattern resonance, not screening severity. The boundaries are anchored to proportions of the maximum self-inventory score, not to any external clinical cutoff.

The proportional design produces three bands of equal width (12 points each) and one slightly wider band (Band 4, 13 points) to absorb the maximum-score offset. The boundaries are deliberately different from the RAADS-14 boundaries (0–7, 8–13, 14–25, 26–42) to avoid implying equivalence between the two band systems.

Why proportional-to-max anchoring (and not a published-framework anchor)

Some adult mental-health instruments anchor their score bands to published external frameworks rather than to proportions of the maximum. For instance, the LifeByLogic Adult ADHD Symptom Inventory v1.0 anchors its four bands to Kessler et al. (2007)’s four-stratum ASRS classification — a published clinical-population stratification that gives the band cutpoints external validity beyond LBL design choice.

No published analogue exists for adult-autism self-report instruments. The RAADS-14 uses a single clinical cutoff (≥ 14) without any further stratification of the positive-screen range. The AQ-10 uses a single cutoff (≥ 6) similarly. The RAADS-R and the longer AQ-50 have proposed severity bands but those bands are author-suggested rather than population-validated, and they sit on different score ranges (0–240 for RAADS-R, 0–50 for AQ-50) that don’t translate cleanly to a 0–48 instrument.

Given the absence of a directly mappable published-framework anchor, the LBL-AAS uses proportional-to-max anchoring as an honest design choice rather than constructing a synthetic anchor from instruments that don’t natively support one. We document this gap rather than paper over it: the LBL-AAS band cutpoints are LifeByLogic-chosen, anchored to proportions of the maximum reflection score, and have no external validation. Phase 4 of the validation roadmap (section viii) is the path by which this could change — an empirical 4-stratum derivation from a clinician-confirmed sample (n ≥ 3,000) would produce externally validated cutpoints in a future v2.0.

Why no clinical cutoff

Adding a clinical cutoff would imply a screen-positive / screen-negative determination that the LBL-AAS is not designed to support. The four self-inventory bands are educational categories that describe pattern resonance — how strongly the four constructs landed for the user — rather than screening outcomes. Adults who want a research-validated cutoff should take the RAADS-14 (cutoff ≥ 14, Eriksson 2013) or AQ-10 (cutoff ≥ 6, Allison 2012); we link to both from the on-tool methodology summary and from section ix of this page.

Why four bands, not three or five

Four bands map cleanly to the four-construct structure (Band 1 = roughly one construct’s worth of resonance distributed; Band 2 = roughly two; Band 3 = roughly three; Band 4 = all four). Three bands would force a too-broad middle category. Five bands would create boundaries too narrow for the educational-self-inventory use case. Four is the structural compromise that produces balanced, interpretable categories.

The lens-profile system is a LifeByLogic-original interpretive layer that describes the shape of a self-inventory response rather than its magnitude. It assigns one of six lens profiles based on construct salience — the fraction of the total score contributed by each construct — using a 0.35 salience threshold for dominance.

Construct salience: definition

Construct salience is calculated as construct score divided by total score. For a user with social = 8, sensory = 4, routine = 4, focus = 4, total = 20: social salience = 8/20 = 0.40, all others = 4/20 = 0.20. The maximum salience is 0.40, which exceeds the 0.35 threshold — so the response is assigned the Social-Reading lens.

The 0.35 threshold was chosen because it is meaningfully above the equal-weight baseline of 0.25 (what you'd get if all four constructs contributed equally) without being so high that distinct dominance is rare. Threshold sensitivity testing across simulated response distributions suggests that with the threshold at 0.35, roughly 30–40% of completed self-inventories in adult-autism populations would be expected to fall into the Composite lens (no single dominance) and the remainder into one of the four single-construct lenses. The exact distribution depends on the population sampled and is one of the parameters that empirical validation work would refine.

Six lens profiles

Six lenses cover the full distribution of possible response shapes. Lens A (Even Mirror) handles low-total responses where dominance computation is uninformative. Lenses B–E handle the four single-construct dominance cases. Lens F (Composite) handles distributed responses where no single construct exceeds the threshold.

Why salience-fraction instead of fixed thresholds

Fixed thresholds (e.g. "social score ≥ 8 → social-reading lens") treat each construct’s contribution in isolation. Salience-fraction routing treats each construct’s contribution proportionally — the same construct score means different things at different total scores. A social score of 8 at a total of 20 (40% salience) is dominant; a social score of 8 at a total of 32 (25% salience) is just one part of a composite picture. The salience approach captures that distinction.

Tie handling

When two or more constructs share the maximum salience above the 0.35 threshold (rare but possible), the lens is assigned by deterministic first-match-wins ordering: social, sensory, routine, focus. This ordering matches the order constructs appear in the on-tool form, ensuring consistent results across multiple evaluations of the same response set. The probability of an exact tie in the maximum salience is low for typical 12-item response patterns; when it occurs, the deterministic tiebreaker is documented behavior, not arbitrary.

Each of the four constructs is grounded in peer-reviewed adult-autism research. The constructs themselves are not LifeByLogic-original — the items are. Each construct card below documents the published literature that supports the construct’s relevance to adult-autism presentations.

The LBL-AAS v1.0 ships as an educational instrument with no independent psychometric validation. That status is not an end state — it is a starting point. This section documents the four-phase validation plan we intend to pursue, in order, before any future version of the instrument can be positioned as a research-grade screen.

We are publishing the roadmap up front for three reasons: (1) transparency — users deserve to know not only what the instrument is today but where it is going; (2) accountability — a published roadmap commits us to validation work rather than letting "educational" become a permanent dodge; (3) reproducibility — researchers external to LifeByLogic can adopt, replicate, or contest any of these phases independently.

Phase 1 — Internal consistency pilot (n ≈ 200)

A convenience-sample pilot to evaluate item-level performance and per-construct internal consistency. Target sample: roughly 200 adults aged 18–65 recruited through general-population channels (not autism-community-only, to avoid prevalence inflation). Required deliverables:

• Cronbach’s α for the full 12-item scale and per-construct (3 items each). Acceptable threshold: α ≥ 0.70 per construct.
• Item-total correlations for each of the 12 items. Items with corrected item-total correlation < 0.30 will be flagged for revision.
• Inter-item correlation matrix within and across constructs. Within-construct correlations should exceed across-construct correlations on average.
• Response distribution per item. Floor/ceiling effects (> 80% of responses in the lowest or highest two anchor positions) will be flagged for re-wording.

Phase 1 is the minimum precondition for any claim that the four-construct structure is empirically supported in adult self-report. Until Phase 1 is complete, the construct framework is justified by published literature only, not by LBL-AAS-specific data.

Phase 2 — Test-retest reliability (n ≈ 100, 4–6 week interval)

Re-administration to a subset of the Phase 1 sample at a 4–6 week interval to assess temporal stability. Required deliverables:

• Test-retest correlation (Pearson’s r) for total score and per-construct scores. Acceptable threshold: r ≥ 0.75 for total, ≥ 0.65 per construct.
• Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC, 2,1) for absolute agreement on band assignment between time points.
• Lens-profile stability — what fraction of respondents receive the same lens at both time points? This is a tool-specific measure not used in standard psychometric work but is directly relevant to whether the lens system carries durable information.

Phase 2 will document the unknown that limitation section x flags: the LBL-AAS currently has no test-retest data and within-period variability is uncalibrated.

Phase 3 — Convergent and discriminant validity (n ≈ 500)

Co-administration with established adult-autism instruments and with instruments measuring overlapping but distinct constructs (anxiety, ADHD, sensory processing sensitivity). Required deliverables:

• Convergent validity — correlation of LBL-AAS total with: RAADS-14 total (Eriksson 2013), AQ-10 total (Allison 2012), CAT-Q total (Hull 2019), SPQ total (Tavassoli 2014). Expected correlations: r = 0.55–0.75 with the autism-trait instruments (RAADS-14, AQ-10); r = 0.35–0.55 with the sensory instrument (SPQ); r = 0.30–0.50 with CAT-Q.
• Discriminant validity — correlation of LBL-AAS total with: GAD-7 (anxiety), ASRS-related measures (ADHD), PHQ-9 (depression). Expected correlations should be lower than convergent correlations and statistically distinguishable from them.
• Construct-level convergent / discriminant patterns — LBL-AAS Sensory should correlate higher with SPQ than with non-sensory instruments; LBL-AAS Social-Cognitive should correlate higher with autism social-communication measures than with general anxiety; etc. Per-construct convergent / discriminant patterns are the strongest evidence for the four-construct structure being meaningful, not just empirically separable.

Phase 4 — Diagnostic accuracy (n ≥ 3,000, clinician-confirmed subsample)

A larger-scale study with a clinician-confirmed diagnostic subsample to evaluate the LBL-AAS as a screening signal against clinical autism diagnosis. Required deliverables:

• Sensitivity and specificity at each reflection-band boundary, against clinician-confirmed autism diagnosis as ground truth.
• Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis with Area Under the Curve (AUC) for the total score predicting clinical diagnosis.
• Sex/gender stratification of all accuracy metrics, given the documented under-diagnosis of autism in women and gender-diverse adults (Lai 2015).
• Lens-profile differential — do specific lens profiles (e.g., Composite, Sensory-Tuned) predict clinical diagnosis at different rates than the total score alone? If yes, the lens system carries diagnostic-relevant information beyond magnitude; if no, the lens system is interpretive scaffolding only.

Phase 4 is the only phase that would justify positioning a future LBL-AAS version as a clinical screen rather than an educational instrument. We do not commit to a Phase 4 deliverable timeline. Phase 4 requires partnership with a clinical site or research network, and the LBL-AAS may remain in the educational-instrument category indefinitely if a credible clinical-partnership pathway does not materialize.

Open invitation to independent validation

Any researcher who wishes to run any of the four phases independently is welcome to do so. The LBL-AAS items, scoring, bands, and lens-routing logic are all documented on this methodology page in enough detail to be reproduced without LifeByLogic involvement. We request only that the LBL-AAS v1.0 be cited as the instrument under study (see § How to cite below) and that LifeByLogic be informed of completed validation work so that this page can be updated with citations to independent validation reports.

Contact: hello@lifebylogic.com.

The LBL-AAS sits alongside several established adult-autism instruments. The table below shows how it differs structurally. If you want a research-validated screen, take the RAADS-14 or AQ-10. The LBL-AAS is for the user who wants an educational construct map with a lens-profile interpretation.

The LBL-AAS’s unique contributions in this comparison are: (1) the four-construct structure including a focus dimension absent from the RAADS-14, (2) the equal-weight construct contribution, (3) the present-tense response scale, and (4) the lens-profile interpretive layer. Its limitation relative to the others is that it has not been independently validated.

Reference data for context

Because the LBL-AAS has no validated norms of its own, the data below is offered as external reference only, drawn from the published distributions of comparison instruments. These numbers do not translate to LBL-AAS scores and should not be used to interpret an LBL-AAS result as "above average" or "below average" relative to a population.

What the table tells you in broad strokes: published instruments separate adult autism samples from non-psychiatric controls by roughly 4–5 standard deviations on the autism-trait dimension. The separation between autism samples and psychiatric outpatients (e.g., RAADS-14 means of ~33 vs ~17) is smaller — reflecting genuine construct overlap with other psychiatric conditions. None of these numbers should be treated as LBL-AAS calibration data. They are published distributions of separate, validated instruments — useful context for users who want to know what trait-density looks like at the population level, but not interpretive guidance for an LBL-AAS score.

If you want to know where you fall against a validated norm, take the RAADS-14 or AQ-10 directly — both are openly available in the published papers (Eriksson 2013 is CC BY 2.0).

Not psychometrically validated

The 12 items, the four-construct organization, the 0–48 range, the four self-inventory bands, and the six lens profiles are LifeByLogic-original constructions. None has been independently tested for internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha), test-retest reliability over time, factor structure, or sensitivity / specificity against clinical autism diagnosis. Until that validation work is performed, the LBL-AAS remains an educational instrument, not a research screen.

Self-report limits

Like all self-report instruments, the LBL-AAS captures present-day perception, not underlying neurodevelopmental reality. Adults who have spent years masking (Hull et al., 2017) may underreport patterns that an external observer would identify clearly. Adults experiencing depression, anxiety, or burnout may overreport across multiple constructs without an autism pattern underneath. The self-inventory cannot disentangle "what the pattern is" from "what the person currently notices about the pattern" — that disentangling requires clinical interview, history-taking, and often informant reports.

Construct overlap with other conditions

Each construct overlaps with at least one non-autism framework:

• Social-Cognitive overlaps with social anxiety disorder, attachment trauma, and ADHD-related interpersonal patterns. A high social-cognitive score does not specifically indicate autism.
• Sensory overlaps with sensory processing sensitivity (the highly-sensitive-person construct), sensory-processing disorder, and migraine-related sensory load. A high sensory score does not specifically indicate autism.
• Routine overlaps with anxiety-driven need for predictability, OCD-spectrum patterns, and burnout-related cognitive rigidity. A high routine score does not specifically indicate autism.
• Focus overlaps with ADHD’s hyperfocus pattern. A high focus score is consistent with autism, ADHD, or both (AuDHD).

The lens profiles flag these overlaps in the on-tool result section, but only a clinician can disentangle which framework fits.

Cultural and linguistic limits

The items are written in English and reflect Western adult-life contexts (office days, commutes, restaurants, fluorescent lighting). Cultural variation in social rituals, sensory environments, and interest expression means the self-inventory may resonate differently across populations. The LBL-AAS has not been translated into any language other than English, and no cross-cultural invariance work has been performed.

What this tool is not

The LBL-AAS is not the RAADS-14, the RAADS-R, the AQ, the AQ-10, the EQ, the SQ, the CAT-Q, the RBQ-2A, the AdAS, the GSQ, or the SPQ. It is not derived from any of those instruments — items, anchors, scoring, and bands are independent. If you would like to take a research-validated autism screen, the RAADS-14 (Eriksson et al., 2013) is openly available in the published paper itself. For LifeByLogic’s adult autism instrument, see the Adult Autism Self-Inventory.

What this tool does not assess

The LBL-AAS does not assess: developmental onset (DSM-5 Criterion C); functional impact across contexts (DSM-5 Criterion D); intellectual or language-development history; co-occurring intellectual disability; medical or genetic etiology; treatment or support needs; eligibility for any clinical or educational service. None of these are appropriate targets for a brief self-report educational instrument.

v1.0 internal review (2026-05-10)

The LBL-AAS v1.0 methodology was authored by Abiot Y. Derbie, PhD (cognitive neuroscientist; LifeByLogic founder) and reviewed by Eskezeia Y. Dessie, PhD (independent reviewer with adult-autism research experience). The review covered five areas:

1. Construct selection rationale against the published adult-autism literature (Lai 2014, Lai 2019, Hull 2017, Tavassoli 2014, Crane 2009).
2. Item wording for present-tense framing, originality against existing instruments (verbatim and close-paraphrase checks against RAADS-14, RAADS-R, AQ, AQ-10, EQ, SQ, CAT-Q, RBQ-2A, AdAS, GSQ, SPQ items), and clinical / care-aware tone.
3. Scoring math and lens-routing logic, including band-boundary derivation, salience-fraction threshold selection, and tie-handling.
4. Limitations disclosure, including the not-validated status, self-report limits, construct overlap, and cultural / linguistic limits.
5. Care-aware copy in the on-tool result section, including the crisis-resource references and the response to potentially-distressing self-inventory outcomes.

The review log and any documented disagreements between author and reviewer are available on request via hello@lifebylogic.com.

The v1.0 review is an internal scholarly review by qualified neuroscience-trained reviewers, not a clinical credentialing process. The reviewers’ expertise covers research methodology, construct theory, and care-aware writing — it does not extend to diagnostic accuracy of the items in clinical practice, which is what the planned v2.0 clinical review (below) will assess.

v2.0 clinical review (planned)

A second-tier review by a clinician credentialed in adult autism diagnosis (psychologist, psychiatrist, or developmental specialist with at least five years of adult-autism clinical experience) is planned for v2.0 of the LBL-AAS. The clinical review will cover:

1. Diagnostic-adjacent item content: do the 12 items capture features that meaningfully discriminate adult autism from look-alike conditions (anxiety, ADHD, trauma, burnout) in the reviewer’s clinical practice?
2. Lens-profile clinical utility: do the six lens profiles map onto patterns the reviewer sees in clinical work, and do they convey clinically useful nuance beyond a single total score?
3. Crisis-resource appropriateness: are the on-tool care-aware messages and crisis resources calibrated for the population most likely to take this self-inventory (adults navigating late self-recognition)?
4. Referral pathway adequacy: are the cross-tool referrals (Adult ADHD Test, GAD-7, PHQ-9) the right set for a user who lands in each lens profile?

The v2.0 clinical review is contingent on identifying a credentialed reviewer with appropriate adult-autism clinical experience and on completing Phase 1 of the validation roadmap (see section viii). If the v2.0 clinical review identifies material changes to items, scoring, or lens routing, a major version increment (v2.0) will be issued with a full change log; minor copy or clarity changes will trigger a minor increment (v1.1).

Future revisions to items, scoring, bands, or lens routing will be logged here with version increment, date, and change summary. Material changes (any modification to items, scoring math, or band/lens boundaries) will trigger a major version increment (v2.0); copy and clarity changes will trigger a minor version increment (v1.1).

Construct salience

The fraction of the total self-inventory score contributed by a single construct, calculated as construct score / total score. Used as the primary input to the lens-profile routing logic. A salience above 0.35 indicates dominance of that construct in the response shape.

Lens profile

A LifeByLogic-original interpretive layer that describes the shape of a self-inventory response rather than its magnitude. The LBL-AAS assigns one of six lens profiles (Even Mirror, Social-Reading, Sensory-Tuned, Pattern-and-Routine, Focus-and-Depth, Composite) based on construct salience.

Self-Inventory band

One of four educational categories that describe the magnitude of pattern resonance: Band 1 (0–11 / "A few patterns resonated"), Band 2 (12–23 / "Some patterns resonated"), Band 3 (24–35 / "A pronounced pattern resonated"), Band 4 (36–48 / "A strongly pronounced pattern resonated"). Bands describe resonance, not severity, and have no clinical screening interpretation.

AuDHD

Co-occurring autism and ADHD, with reported prevalence of 28–44% in adult autism samples (Lai et al., 2019). The LBL-AAS’s Focus construct overlaps significantly with ADHD’s hyperfocus pattern, which is part of why a Focus-and-Depth lens result often warrants holding the result alongside the Adult ADHD Reflection.

Camouflaging (masking)

The conscious or unconscious effort to fit neurotypical expectations by suppressing visible autistic traits. Hull et al. (2017) characterize masking as compensation, masking proper, and assimilation. Masking is one of the primary reasons self-report instruments may underreport patterns in late-diagnosed autistic adults — particularly women — and is a documented limitation of the LBL-AAS (see section x).

Why isn't this validated?

Psychometric validation requires substantial population sampling (typically n > 300 across multiple groups), confirmatory factor analysis, sensitivity / specificity studies against clinical diagnosis, and test-retest stability work. The LBL-AAS is published as an educational instrument grounded in peer-reviewed construct literature, not as a research-validated screen. The framework choices are documented transparently here so anyone who wants to validate the instrument can do so. We welcome independent validation work — contact hello@lifebylogic.com.

Why salience-fraction routing instead of fixed thresholds?

Fixed thresholds treat each construct’s contribution in isolation. Salience-fraction routing treats each construct’s contribution proportionally — the same construct score means different things at different total scores. The salience approach captures that distinction. The 0.35 threshold is meaningfully above the 0.25 equal-weight baseline without being so high that distinct dominance is rare.

Why no clinical cutoff?

Adding a clinical cutoff would imply a screen-positive / screen-negative determination that the instrument is not designed to support. The four self-inventory bands are educational categories that describe pattern resonance, not screening outcomes. Adults who want a research-validated cutoff should take the RAADS-14 (cutoff ≥ 14, Eriksson 2013) or AQ-10 (cutoff ≥ 6, Allison 2012).

How do the bands compare to the RAADS-14 bands?

The boundaries are deliberately different to avoid implying equivalence. RAADS-14 bands (in 0–42 range): Minimal 0–7, Mild 8–13, Moderate (positive screen) 14–25, Significant 26–42. LBL-AAS bands (in 0–48 range): Band 1 0–11, Band 2 12–23, Band 3 24–35, Band 4 36–48. The LBL bands are evenly proportioned to the maximum self-inventory score; the RAADS bands are anchored to the published clinical cutoff at item 14. The two systems are not interchangeable.

Can I retake it on the same day?

Yes. The self-inventory has no test-retest reliability data of its own (this is a documented limitation), so within-day variability is uncalibrated. Many users find that the second pass produces a slightly different total — usually because items they rushed past on first reading land differently on the second. Treat the difference as informative: items whose response shifted are often the ones worth holding for longer consideration. The lens profile is more stable than the total under repeated administration; if your lens stays the same across attempts, that’s stronger signal than a single number.

Why a present-tense scale instead of lifetime?

The RAADS-14 uses a lifetime time-frame because it is a clinical screen designed to capture autism’s developmental-onset criterion via self-report. The LBL-AAS uses a present-tense scale because it is an educational self-inventory designed to capture present-day pattern resonance. The present-tense framing avoids the contested age-of-onset question and makes the self-inventory appropriate for adults whose memory of childhood patterns is uncertain — which Hull et al. (2017) document is common in late-diagnosed adults.

What review process did this go through?

The methodology was authored by Abiot Y. Derbie, PhD and reviewed by Eskezeia Y. Dessie, PhD. The review covered construct selection, item wording, scoring math, limitations disclosure, and care-aware copy. The review log is documented in section xi above.

Why no abbreviated screener version?

Many validated adult-autism instruments offer a brief-screener subset of their full item set — e.g., the AQ-10 is derived from the AQ-50; the RAADS-14 is itself derived from the 80-item RAADS-R. These brief subsets carry the validation work of their parent instrument forward and are useful because they shorten administration without losing diagnostic signal.

The LBL-AAS does not offer an abbreviated version, and this is deliberate. Brief-subset construction is a derivative-content design choice that requires its own validation work. Selecting "the most diagnostic" 6 or 8 items from the 12-item set would either (a) borrow methodology from existing brief-screener derivation procedures (e.g., the Kessler 2005 ASRS-6 selection method), which would tie the LBL-AAS to those instruments in a way it currently isn’t, or (b) be an unstructured author-judgment selection, which would undermine the rigor of the 4-construct equal-weight design. Until Phase 1 of the validation roadmap (section viii) produces item-level performance data, there is no empirical basis for choosing which items to drop. The 12-item form takes about three minutes; the marginal time saved by a brief version does not justify the methodology cost.

Why no screener-subset scoring rule (e.g., "5 items at ‘Strongly fits’ or higher")?

Some validated screening instruments include a symptom-count surrogate (e.g., the ASRS-6 uses a "4 or more items at sometimes or higher" rule, derived from Kessler 2005’s screener-selection methodology). These rules are useful as quick clinical signals but require their own validation: the specific count threshold, the specific items included in the count, and the specific anchor cutoff are all calibrated against ground-truth diagnosis.

The LBL-AAS does not include any analogous symptom-count rule. The four-band classification is the only summary signal the instrument produces, and it’s based on the full sum of 12 items rather than a count of items above a threshold. Adding a count-based screener rule would constitute derivative content modeled on an existing instrument’s methodology, which is exactly what the LBL-AAS was constructed to avoid.

Why no archetype routing using count-of-items-at-threshold?

A common pattern in adult-autism screening is to route a user to an archetype based on which subscales have "enough" items above a particular anchor (e.g., "5 items at ‘True now and when I was young’ on the Mentalizing subscale routes the user to the Mentalizing-Focused archetype"). This pattern is derived from Kessler 2005’s symptom-count surrogate methodology — itself a contribution of that paper.

The LBL-AAS uses construct salience as a continuous fraction instead of count-of-items-at-threshold. Salience is a different mathematical construct — construct score / total score, ranging continuously from 0 to 1 — and was chosen specifically to avoid borrowing the count-of-items methodology while still producing an interpretable shape-of-response signal. The trade-off: salience is harder to communicate to users than a count rule (it requires understanding division), but it produces a more nuanced and proportionally honest description of the response shape.

If you reference this methodology document or the Adult Autism Self-Inventory in a paper, presentation, or clinical setting, use one of the standard citation formats below. The tool itself is LifeByLogic-original and has not been independently psychometrically validated — cite it as an educational instrument, not a research-validated screen.

Now that you've read how the instrument is constructed, you may be ready to take it. The self-inventory takes about three minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and never transmits your responses anywhere.

The four constructs in this self-inventory are grounded in twenty years of peer-reviewed adult-autism research. The references below cover construct foundations, comorbidity context, sex/gender differences and underdiagnosis, comparison instruments, and adult-autism epidemiology. The Adult Autism Self-Inventory itself is LifeByLogic-original; the references support the constructs, not the instrument.

Primary construct foundation

1. Lai, M.-C., Lombardo, M. V., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). Autism. The Lancet, 383(9920), 896–910. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61539-1
2. Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C., & Mandy, W. (2017). "Putting on my best normal": social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), 2519–2534. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-016-3000-5
3. Tavassoli, T., Hoekstra, R. A., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). The Sensory Perception Quotient (SPQ): development and validation of a new sensory questionnaire for adults with and without autism. Molecular Autism, 5, 29. doi.org/10.1186/2040-2392-5-29
4. Crane, L., Goddard, L., & Pring, L. (2009). Sensory processing in adults with autism spectrum disorders. Autism, 13(3), 215–228. doi.org/10.1177/1362361309103794

Comorbidity and co-occurring conditions

5. Lai, M.-C., Kassee, C., Besney, R., Bonato, S., Hull, L., Mandy, W., Szatmari, P., & Ameis, S. H. (2019). Prevalence of co-occurring mental health diagnoses in the autism population: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(10), 819–829. doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30289-5
6. Cassidy, S., Bradley, P., Robinson, J., Allison, C., McHugh, M., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). Suicidal ideation and suicide plans or attempts in adults with Asperger’s syndrome attending a specialist diagnostic clinic: a clinical cohort study. The Lancet Psychiatry, 1(2), 142–147. doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70248-2
7. Mandy, W., & Tchanturia, K. (2015). Do women with eating disorders who have social and flexibility difficulties really have autism? A case series. Molecular Autism, 6, 6. doi.org/10.1186/2040-2392-6-6

Sex differences and underdiagnosis

8. Lai, M.-C., Lombardo, M. V., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex/gender differences and autism: setting the scene for future research. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 54(1), 11–24. doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2014.10.003
9. Hull, L., Mandy, W., Lai, M.-C., Baron-Cohen, S., Allison, C., Smith, P., & Petrides, K. V. (2019). Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), 819–833. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6

Comparison instruments

10. Eriksson, J. M., Andersen, L. M. J., & Bejerot, S. (2013). RAADS-14 Screen: validity of a screening tool for autism spectrum disorder in an adult psychiatric population. Molecular Autism, 4(1), 49. doi.org/10.1186/2040-2392-4-49 · CC BY 2.0
11. Allison, C., Auyeung, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2012). Toward brief "red flags" for autism screening: the Short Autism Spectrum Quotient and the Short Quantitative Checklist in 1,000 cases and 3,000 controls. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 51(2), 202–212. doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2011.11.003
12. Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., & Clubley, E. (2001). The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ): evidence from Asperger syndrome / high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31(1), 5–17. doi.org/10.1023/A:1005653411471
13. Ritvo, R. A., Ritvo, E. R., Guthrie, D., Yuwiler, A., Ritvo, M. J., & Weisbender, L. (2011). The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R): a scale to assist the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41(8), 1076–1089. doi.org/10.1007/s10803-010-1133-5

Epidemiology and outcomes

14. Maenner, M. J., Warren, Z., Williams, A. R., et al. (2023). Prevalence and characteristics of autism spectrum disorder among children aged 8 years — Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 sites, United States, 2020. MMWR Surveillance Summaries, 72(2), 1–14. doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss7202a1
15. Croen, L. A., Zerbo, O., Qian, Y., Massolo, M. L., Rich, S., Sidney, S., & Kripke, C. (2015). The health status of adults on the autism spectrum. Autism, 19(7), 814–823. doi.org/10.1177/1362361315577517
16. Lai, M.-C., Anagnostou, E., Wiznitzer, M., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2020). Evidence-based support for autistic people across the lifespan: maximising potential, minimising barriers, and optimising the person-environment fit. The Lancet Neurology, 19(5), 434–451. doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(20)30034-X