Thanks to everybody who took part. Now it's time to see the results. I've counted up everyone's agreements and disagreements (using some amount of reading between the lines. I didn't count any that were unclear). The 'autistic' answer for each statement is indicated with bold type:
| statement | agree | disagree |
|---|---|---|
| I often notice small sounds when others do not. | 23 | 0 |
| When I’m reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters’ intentions. | 5 | 1 |
| I find it easy to "read between the lines" when someone is talking to me. | 0 | 6 |
| I usually concentrate more on the whole picture, rather than the small details. | 0 | 4 |
| I know how to tell if someone listening to me is getting bored. | 2 | 4 |
| I find it easy to do more than one thing at once. | 1 | 4 |
| I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face. | 1 | 5 |
| If there is an interruption, I can switch back to what I was doing very quickly. | 3 | 4 |
| I like to collect information about categories of things. | 5 | 2 |
| I find it difficult to work out people’s intentions. | 4 | 0 |
So, lemmy.world/autism picked the autistic option every time and scored a perfect 10/10. Interestingly, if we weight it proportionately according to how many picked each option, we only get 6.2, barely over the threshold.
Scores of 6 or over indicate possible autism spectrum disorder, so lemmy.world/autism should seriously consider the possibility that they may be autistic.
(Personally, I got 8. Go me!)
My intentions for running this test was it would be interesting and fun, and I think it was (One respondent was concerned I might have some undisclosed professional interest - I don't, but thanks for looking out for the community). I think the main takeaway is that interpreting self-report questions can be really hard.
Should I do another? If so, should I do anything differently?
For those 'people often say...' questions, there's huge cultural variations in how acceptable it is to even talk about one's personal traits. 'people say I am very blunt' - sorry I don't know anyone blunt enough to say that.
In your case, I think you'd answer Agree for this question. It's not up to you to tease out if it's the result of condition X or condition Y. And your health provider shouldn't be making that determination based purely on which option you picked on a self-report questionnaire.