The Aspie Quiz

The Aspie Quiz is a popular online questionnaire that explores autistic and neurodivergent traits. It can be fun to take, and many people find the questions describe experiences they haven’t encountered on more traditional autism tests.

However, if you are trying to understand whether you might be autistic, it is important not to rely on the Aspie Quiz for that answer.

The Aspie Quiz does not have the same level of independent research and validation as more established autism measures. If your results make you curious about autism, we recommend following the Aspie Quiz with better-researched measures such as the AQ, RAADS–R, and EQ.

Take the test here:

What does the Aspie Quiz measure?

Unlike many autism questionnaires, the Aspie Quiz was designed to measure both autistic/neurodivergent and neurotypical traits.

The current version explores traits across five broad areas:

• Talent
• Perception
• Communication
• Relationships
• Social experiences

One of the appealing things about the Aspie Quiz is the breadth of its questions. Some people encounter questions that describe aspects of their experience they had never previously connected with autism or neurodivergence.

The Aspie Quiz can be an interesting tool for self-exploration. But self-exploration and psychometric validation are two different things.

How is the Aspie Quiz scored?

Version 5 of the Aspie Quiz produces:

• A score from 0–200
• An estimated probability of being atypical (neurodivergent/autistic) or typical (neurotypical)
• A profile showing your results across different areas

Previous versions calculated separate neurodiverse and neurotypical scores.

These results can be interesting to explore, but you need to be cautious about interpreting the score as evidence that you are, or are not, autistic.

How well researched is the Aspie Quiz?

This is where the Aspie Quiz differs considerably from more established autism measures.

There is published research on the Aspie Quiz. The main study was conducted and published by its creator, Leif Ekblad, in 2013. In addition, it is not independently reviewed, making it impossible to know whether the test is valid or not.

The study used a very large online dataset and compared Aspie Quiz scores with several other questionnaires. For example, Aspie Quiz scores correlated strongly with scores on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The research also examined the factor structure of the questionnaire across multiple versions.

These are interesting findings.

However, there are important limitations to what we can conclude from them.

Much of the validation comes from the development data

The Aspie Quiz was developed iteratively using responses collected through the online quiz itself.

In other words, questions were tested, selected, modified, and refined using the accumulating online data.

This can be useful during questionnaire development, but it differs from developing a measure and then having independent researchers test the finished measure in completely separate samples.

Diagnostic status was self-reported

Participants reported whether they had no diagnosis, were self-diagnosed, or had been professionally diagnosed.

The researchers were therefore not independently assessing participants to determine whether they met diagnostic criteria for autism.

That makes statements about how accurately the Aspie Quiz identifies autistic people less certain than they would be in a study where diagnostic status was independently established.

The participants were self-selected

People chose to visit the website and complete the Aspie Quiz.

This produces a very large sample, but a huge sample does not necessarily eliminate sampling bias.

People searching for and completing an autism or neurodiversity questionnaire are not necessarily representative of either the general population or people presenting for an autism assessment.

The test has continued to change

The Aspie Quiz has gone through many iterations.

That creates another difficulty: research on an earlier version does not automatically validate a later version.

The current Aspie Quiz is Version 5, whereas much of the published research concerns earlier versions of the measure.

There is very little independent replication

This is probably the biggest limitation.

For a psychological measure to become well established, we ideally want multiple independent research groups to examine it in different populations and settings.

We would want to know things such as:

• Does the measure reliably distinguish autistic from non-autistic participants?
• How sensitive and specific is it?
• Does it produce similar results when someone takes it again?
• Does its proposed factor structure replicate?
• Does it perform similarly across genders, ages, cultures, and clinical populations?
• How does it perform against an autism diagnosis established independently by clinicians?

The Aspie Quiz does not currently have a large body of independent research answering these questions.

What about the newer Aspie Quiz research?

There has been more recent work.

In 2024, Ekblad (the test creator) analyzed approximately three million responses collected using Aspie Quiz Version 4 across several languages. The study examined whether scores formed distinct atypical/neurodivergent and typical clusters and was used to estimate the probability of being atypical.

The research was again conducted by the creator of the Aspie Quiz, used data generated through the quiz itself, and was released as a preprint rather than a peer-reviewed independent clinical validation study.

So although this research is interesting, it does not resolve the major limitation of the Aspie Quiz: the lack of substantial independent validation of the current measure in well-characterized autistic and non-autistic populations.

So, is the Aspie Quiz accurate?

The available research does not allow us to confidently answer that question.

That doesn’t mean your Aspie Quiz results are meaningless.

You may recognize yourself strongly in its questions. It may help you identify experiences you want to explore further. And it may be an enjoyable introduction to thinking about neurodivergence.

But if your real question is:

“Am I showing autistic traits?”

we recommend moving on to measures with a stronger research base rather than relying on your Aspie Quiz score.

Better-researched autism measures

No online autism test can diagnose autism. However, some measures have undergone considerably more psychometric research than others.

If you enjoyed the Aspie Quiz and want to investigate your autistic traits more seriously, these are the measures we recommend exploring next.

Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ)

Best place to start

The AQ is one of the most extensively researched self-report measures of autistic traits.

It contains 50 questions and measures traits across five areas:

• Social skills
• Attention switching
• Attention to detail
• Communication
• Imagination

Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues developed the AQ and published it in 2001. Since then, it has been examined across many studies, populations, countries, and languages.

It isn’t diagnostic, and it has limitations, particularly when we try to apply a single cutoff to everyone, but its research base is substantially larger than that of the Aspie Quiz.

Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale–Revised (RAADS–R)

For a deeper exploration of autistic experiences

The RAADS–R is an 80-item autism questionnaire designed for adults.

It explores four areas:

• Social relatedness
• Circumscribed interests
• Language
• Sensory–motor experiences

One particularly useful feature of the RAADS–R is that many questions ask you to consider whether an experience is true now, only when you were younger, or both now and when you were younger.

That matters because autism is developmental. Autistic traits do not suddenly begin in adulthood, although how they appear can change considerably over a person’s lifetime.

The RAADS–R has undergone clinical validation and has also been investigated by researchers independent of its original developers.

Empathy Quotient (EQ)

For understanding your empathy profile

The EQ explores empathy-related characteristics.

Historically, autism research often framed autistic people as simply having “low empathy.” We now know the picture is considerably more complicated.

The EQ can be divided into areas including:

• Cognitive empathy
• Emotional reactivity
• Social skills

Looking at these separately can reveal something that a total empathy score may hide.

For example, someone may experience strong emotional responses to other people’s emotions while having more difficulty intuitively identifying what another person is thinking or feeling.

This imbalance between cognitive and emotional empathy has become an interesting area of autism research.

For this reason, we think the EQ is most useful not as an “Are you autistic?” test, but as another piece of your broader autistic profile.

Example of the output of the Aspie Quiz

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