Autistic Self-Discovery

 

Nineteen free modules, each one built around a single validated self-discovery screener. You do not have to take them in order, and nothing here asks for an email address.

 

Part One — Start Here

 

Module 1 — How to Read an Autism Screener (and What a Score Can't Tell You)

 

Before the eighteen questionnaires: what a screening score actually measures, the four validity tiers every instrument in this course is labelled with, and why a positive result is a reason to look closer rather than an answer.

 

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Part Two — The Broad Screeners

 

Module 2 — RAADS-14 — A Short Autism Screener for Adults

 

Where the fourteen questions came from, what the three groupings underneath them ask, why the famous 97 per cent sensitivity travels everywhere and the specificity never does, and what a score over the line honestly buys you.

 

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Module 3 — AQ-50 — The Best-Known Autistic Traits Questionnaire

 

Where the fifty questions came from, what the two cut-off scores were built to do, why the five named subscales do not hold up under analysis, and what the AQ's real accuracy figures look like once it leaves the research sample.

 

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Module 4 — GQ-ASC — The Autism Questionnaire Written for Women

 

Why the standard description of autism was drawn from boys, what the GQ-ASC asks instead, where it came from, and an honest account of how much weight a score of 57 can carry.

 

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Part Three — Masking and the Shape of Your Mind

 

Module 5 — CAT-Q — Measuring Autistic Masking and Camouflaging

 

What camouflaging actually is, why it keeps people from being recognised for decades, what the 25 questions can and cannot tell you, and how to read three subscale scores that matter more than the total.

 

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Module 6 — RBQ-2A — Repetitive Behaviour and Stimming, Explained Kindly

 

What the twenty questions actually ask, why stimming is better understood as regulation than as a symptom, how insistence on sameness tracks uncertainty rather than stubbornness, and what this score honestly cannot tell you.

 

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Module 7 — The Monotropism Questionnaire — Autistic Attention and Deep Focus

 

What monotropism claims about autistic attention, how a questionnaire written by autistic people came to exist, why its 47 items collapse into a single averaged score, and an honest account of how little of it has been independently tested.

 

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Module 8 — EDA-QA — Demand Avoidance and PDA Traits

 

Why a task can be effortless when it is your idea and impossible when it is asked, what the twenty-six statements of the EDA-QA actually measure, and an honest account of a construct that sits in neither diagnostic manual.

 

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Part Four — Feeling, Naming, Connecting

 

Module 9 — TAS-20 — Alexithymia, When You Can't Name What You Feel

 

What alexithymia actually is, why the questionnaire's three parts are not equally trustworthy, why roughly half of autistic adults score above the line and half do not, and what a total score of 61 does and does not settle.

 

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Module 10 — OAQ-G2 — A Longer Look at Alexithymia

 

A thirty-seven item questionnaire that asks about alexithymia across seven areas rather than three, what its four extra domains add and confuse, and why a tool with no published validation can still be worth an hour of your thinking.

 

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Module 11 — ASIM-24 — Sex, Intimacy and Sensory Reality

 

A reverse-scored questionnaire about sexual knowledge, sensory comfort, boundaries and communication — what the research on autistic adults and intimacy actually shows, and why our own instrument has no validation behind it.

 

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Part Five — Burnout

 

Module 12 — ABTI-24 — The Traits That Make Autistic Burnout Likely

 

What makes autistic burnout likely rather than whether you are in it: masking, chronic strain, the physical toll, and whether rest is genuinely available — plus an honest account of a questionnaire we built ourselves and never validated.

 

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Module 13 — ABSI-24 — Autistic Burnout, Are You In It Right Now?

 

What autistic burnout is as a present state rather than a standing risk, why it is so often treated as depression and why that gets the advice backwards, and an honest account of what this in-house questionnaire can and cannot tell you.

 

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Module 14 — ABO — Autistic Burnout in Eight Questions

 

Why an eight-item burnout screener exists when a twenty-four item one already does, what the research on very short screens shows about the trade they make, and an honest account of what two minutes can and cannot tell you.

 

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Part Six — Traveling Companions

 

Module 15 — Sensory Profile — Sensory Processing Across Eight Senses

 

The three senses nobody taught you, why one sensitivity dial is the wrong model, how the same nervous system reads differently in different rooms, and an honest account of what a sensory score can and cannot tell you.

 

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Module 16 — HSPI-24 — High Sensitivity, or Autistic Sensory Difference?

 

What sensory-processing sensitivity actually is, how far it overlaps with autistic difference and where the two part company, why the popular twenty per cent figure does not hold, and the one finding in this literature that is genuinely good news.

 

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Module 17 — OCI-R — OCD Symptoms: Checking, Ordering and Intrusive Thoughts

 

What the eighteen questions of the OCI-R actually ask, how an autistic routine and an OCD compulsion can look identical from outside while running on opposite fuel, how often the two conditions travel together, and why this page draws its line at 12 rather than 21.

 

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Module 18 — CPQ — Clinical Perfectionism, When Your Standards Run You

 

The difference between having high standards and being run by them, where the twelve-item Clinical Perfectionism Questionnaire came from, how far its psychometrics can be trusted, and how the whole idea reads differently when the standard you are holding is appearing normal.

 

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Module 19 — FMPS — Six Faces of Perfectionism

 

Why one word covers six different experiences, which two subscales actually carry the risk, why two rival scales share the same initials, and an honest account of what a perfectionism score can and cannot tell an autistic adult.

 

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How this course works

 

Every module follows the same five steps: a lesson explaining what the instrument measures and where it came from, what actually helps, the screener itself, a workbook that saves to your own device, and the research behind it with full citations. Each module names its own limitations. Where an instrument is weak, the module says so.

 

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis. Only a clinician can diagnose. A screening questionnaire widens the door to a conversation; it does not walk through it for you.

 

If what you are looking for is not here

 

Several of the traits covered here turn up alongside both profiles. Each one has a single module, filed in whichever course its population usually belongs to, and linked from both. If you are reading this course and something is missing, it is probably in the other one: the ADHD Self-Discovery course.

 

Who made this

 

New Path Family is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit learning centre. It publishes free, neurodiversity-affirming courses, worksheets and screener guides for autistic and ADHD adults and the people who love them. This course is free, self-paced, and asks for no email address. More about the nonprofit.