The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale - Problematic Questions

[allan619]

The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale
​

Has anybody taken this test, I have just taken it online and I have to say it wasn't easy to answer the questions, simple as they seem. In fact I found that the questions were poorly formed, were strangley broad and the selection of 4 multiple choice answers were insufficient to answer the questions accurately. Are they supposed to be difficult to answer? Is it AS that is making it difficult to answer them. Maybe I’m interpreting them far too literally. Here’s a few examples of questions that annoyed me.

Possible answers:
True now and when I was young
True only now
True only when I was younger than 16
Never true

• 
  Question 1
  
  • 
    I cannot imagine what it would be like to be someone else.
    
  • This was the first question that frustrated me because, technically, nobody on this planet knows what it is like to be someone else since we can only ever experience reality from our own perspective. This is a stupid question. I can imagine what it is like to be on Mount Everest; it’s probably cold, windy, and bright. This can be tested by actually going there and thinking this is exactly as I imagined it to be. But testing your imaginings of someone's experience of reality is untestable and anybody who claims to be able to do it is not being honest.
    

This is only one question, I had issues with at least 25% of them, I ended up just choosing any answer to finish the test. I’ve got a diagnostic assessment in a fortnight or so and I’m worried that they are going to attempt to diagnose me using questionnaires like this. I’m not an expert on how to make an AS diagnosis but these types of question, broad non-specific questions seem to be just the type of questions that would annoy an asspie not help them.


Question 2

• 
  I would rather go out to eat in a restaurant by myself than with someone I know.
  
  • This one annoyed me, not because I couldn't understand it, but because there is no possible way to answer it honestly and accurately. The truth is, I would rather not go to the restaurant at all. I have no preference between the two, I find them both to be objectionable. The closest answer that I can give is to say “Never True”. Maybe the problem I’m having is that they are actually not questions at all, they are statements. “I would rather go out to eat in a restaurant by myself than with someone I know” is a statement that claim eating in a restaurant alone is preferable to be with company. If I answer "Never True" to this, then isn't the inferance that I prefer to be with company in a restaurant? I have no preference and therefore I feel I cannot answer this question accurately.

 

[tree]

Generally referred to as the RAADS.
Yes, people often feel perplexed trying to answer the questions
in what they think must be exactly the right way.

• Autism Quotient (AQ): Aspergers Adult AQ Test Quiz Online: Autism Spectrum Quotient
  Forum thread: What’d you score on the Autistic Quotient test?
• Aspie Quiz: Aspie Quiz
  Forum thread: https://www.autismforums.com/threads/rdos-aspie-quiz.25921/
• The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R): The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R)
  Forum thread: The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised

 

[Jojo_LB]

i have problems with tests like this too. I feel like the choices offered give the impression that the questions are too simplistic, or the test makers think they could be relatively easy to answer. Or maybe they knew that autistic people would have a very hard time answering them. I don't know. It'd be an interesting thing to Google how these questions and their choices were decided and their motivations for doing so.

For this particular test, I wish they had a "sometimes true" option, but I think most people would choose that one, NTs and neurodiverse folks alike, which would make it difficult to weed out the neurodiverse folks.

I have similar thought processes, I have so many different ways to answer the question. So, I ended up taking some of the tests multiple times. The way I answered the questions would be to evaluate my thought processes for each question, try my best to think back to how I used to be, think about how I am now, and then choose the ones that most accurately match what I believe to be true.

I took some of the tests again, at least one or two more times, because my thought processes change every day. Each time I retook them, I did not take a look a back at the past ones. I just took them as if I was seeing them for the first time.

I then gathered my scores. If any of them varied wildly from each other, I'd take them again.

Luckily, none of them varied so wildly. I would say that the ones with triple digit scores varied by no more than 5-6 points from each other. The ones with double digit scores varied no more than 2-3 points from each other.

Ideally, I would like to have the option to write down my thought processes lol 'cause it really bothers me to just pick answers and not give my motivations for choosing them. But I think that particular test is meant to reveal the "rigid" folks. Not all of us autistic folks are so rigid. There are other tests you can take too, in addition to this one. I wouldn't suggest taking just one test.

 

[tducey]

I find these quizzes a bit much as well. Also each case of Autism is different so a quiz really doesn't help.

 

[Fino]

The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale
​

Has anybody taken this test, I have just taken it online and I have to say it wasn't easy to answer the questions, simple as they seem. In fact I found that the questions were poorly formed, were strangley broad and the selection of 4 multiple choice answers were insufficient to answer the questions accurately. Are they supposed to be difficult to answer? Is it AS that is making it difficult to answer them. Maybe I’m interpreting them far too literally. Here’s a few examples of questions that annoyed me.

Possible answers:
True now and when I was young
True only now
True only when I was younger than 16
Never true

• 
  Question 1
  • 
    I cannot imagine what it would be like to be someone else.
  • This was the first question that frustrated me because, technically, nobody on this planet knows what it is like to be someone else since we can only ever experience reality from our own perspective. This is a stupid question. I can imagine what it is like to be on Mount Everest; it’s probably cold, windy, and bright. This can be tested by actually going there and thinking this is exactly as I imagined it to be. But testing your imaginings of someone's experience of reality is untestable and anybody who claims to be able to do it is not being honest.

This is only one question, I had issues with at least 25% of them, I ended up just choosing any answer to finish the test. I’ve got a diagnostic assessment in a fortnight or so and I’m worried that they are going to attempt to diagnose me using questionnaires like this. I’m not an expert on how to make an AS diagnosis but these types of question, broad non-specific questions seem to be just the type of questions that would annoy an asspie not help them.


Question 2

• 
  I would rather go out to eat in a restaurant by myself than with someone I know.
  • This one annoyed me, not because I couldn't understand it, but because there is no possible way to answer it honestly and accurately. The truth is, I would rather not go to the restaurant at all. I have no preference between the two, I find them both to be objectionable. The closest answer that I can give is to say “Never True”. Maybe the problem I’m having is that they are actually not questions at all, they are statements. “I would rather go out to eat in a restaurant by myself than with someone I know” is a statement that claim eating in a restaurant alone is preferable to be with company. If I answer "Never True" to this, then isn't the inferance that I prefer to be with company in a restaurant? I have no preference and therefore I feel I cannot answer this question accurately.

In question one, you seem to have misread the question and changed it in your mind to, ""I know what it is like to be someone else." The keyword is "imagine". It has nothing to do with reality or whether or not it can proven. I imagine what it's like to be other people all the time, such as when I see a homeless person and try to imagine how that would feel. My accuracy is irrelevant.

The second question is hard to believe you have no preference at all. If you were forced to go to a restaurant and were given the choice between going alone than with someone you know, someone you pick, which would you choose? Would you just flip a coin? They are such different options, though. One requires you to keep up conversation the entire time. The other might get you odd looks from people because people generally despise aloneness.

 

[stringer]

I've always felt that the phrasing of the possible answers is rather strange in this test. The options seem to be only black or white, in the sense that the allowed answers require a response of true or false. The focus on whether it was true always, versus only before 16 or only now, seems bizarre to me. As far as I am aware, very little has changed over the years in how I would answer the questions, and so essentially no further information is gained by distinguishing between "now" versus before 16. On the other hand, there are many questions where I would like to answer in a more nuanced way, with a "sometimes" or "usually" or "rarely" or something like that.

So at least for me, the set of available options is too restrictive, in that nuanced responses are not allowed, and at the same time the available options make an almost pointless distinction between "now" versus younger.

 

[Progster]

I find these questions a bit to vague, or are making assumptions that don't apply to me, and I tend to overthink them. In the AQ quiz, there is a question that asks if you would prefer to go to the theater or a museum. Well, that would depend on the theater play, and on the museum. Some plays are really great, if it's a comedy, and some museums are really boring or a sensory nightmare. Ok, many autistic people may tick the museum box, thinking that a museum might be a quieter, more interesting place about facts rather than about people and their emotions. But my experience of museums is not good: overcrowded, full of bussloads of noisy schoolkids or tourists with their flashing cameras, information given dumbed down which you can't read anyway without someone bumping into you or crossing in front of you, hour long queues to get into the place... a sensory nightmare! I'll take a well-written comedy play over Madam Tussaud's any day.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

I find these questions a bit to vague, or are making assumptions that don't apply to me, and I tend to overthink them. In the AQ quiz, there is a question that asks if you would prefer to go to the theater or a museum. Well, that would depend on the theater play, and on the museum. Some plays are really great, if it's a comedy, and some museums are really boring or a sensory nightmare. Ok, many autistic people may tick the museum box, thinking that a museum might be a quieter, more interesting place about facts rather than about people and their emotions. But my experience of museums is not good: overcrowded, full of bussloads of noisy schoolkids or tourists with their flashing cameras, information given dumbed down which you can't read anyway without someone bumping into you or crossing in front of you, hour long queues to get into the place... a sensory nightmare! I'll take a well-written comedy play over Madam Tussaud's any day.

My thought is always -
Ah this question is written for me to answer with museum.

Similar thought to every other question..

 

[allan619]

I think Fino is right in that I have missed the point of the question by over thinking it. The question is clearly designed to evaluate someone's ability to use their imagination. I got frustrated because these questions are clearly written by an NT for the sole purpose of giving a diagnosis and yet they don't seem to be written with consideration of how an asspie would interpret them. I fear that these simplistic questions will be used to expedite a diagnosis when clearly a proper diagnosis is achieved over a longer period of time by an in-depth discussion of my own real life experiences.

I struggled with the question because my immediate thoughts were about the lack of objectivity when discussing imagination. Imagining what it is like to be a homeless person is not really using your imagination at all. We have all had some objective experience which relate to living as a homeless person, we've all been cold, wet or hungry at some point, maybe not completely destitute but this is more like an observation of cause and effect. When you sleep in the street you will feel cold, wet and hungry.

Real imagination is about creating something from nothing in your own mind and it will always be completely subjective because even if you imagine a whole world, say the world of The Lord of the Rings or Narnia and even if you are the greatest writer who ever lived there is absolutely no way you can objectively test whether you and your reader have imagined exactly the same world.

The original statement/question was:

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be someone else.
​

This in my mind is true of everybody and therefore a poorly conceived question.

 

[allan619]

My thought is always -
Ah this question is written for me to answer with museum.

Similar thought to every other question..

Yes, this is how I think there NT writer's of the questions assume we will interpret and answer them. Although clealy aspies don't always think in the most simplistic ways.

 

[tree]

@allan619

"This in my mind is true of everybody and therefore a poorly conceived question."

Yes, in your mind you may believe that's true of everybody.
However, that's not what is in all other people's minds.

Some people do find it possible to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.

That doesn't mean they have transported themselves infallibly to the mindset of another.
It does mean that they fantasize what it would be like to experience life as some person
who is not themselves. They imagine what it would be like to be someone else.

 

[Jojo_LB]

I think this is why most of us take multiple tests. And like me, I'm sure others here have taken these tests multiple times.

The tests aren't meant to be diagnostic tools anyway; they give a general idea of the areas in which autistic people may struggle. And since ASD is a spectrum, the severity of the struggles vary. One can only study conditions such as these empirically, questions are subjective by nature because these are based on only observations and experiences. There's no way to be objective in these questions.

In addition, the tests can be used for statistical purposes. Some of the tests (I forget which ones, someone can look them up if they want to), display stats of everyone who takes the test. You can see a clear pattern, for example, the mean scores of NT's who take it are much different from the mean scores of those officially diagnosed with ASD and those who are suspected to be on the spectrum. You can see graphs of the distribution of scores.

Personally I would love to see stats for all the exams, not only because I'm a numbers/stats/data/graph lover, but they are pretty telling.

 

[Daydreamer]

I spent way too long on that restaurant question.

"Hmm, I guess alone? No, wait, what if I speak too quietly and the waiter/waitress can't hear me? Yeah, that's not great. So, maybe I prefer it with other people? Eh...well, not really. I don't like the sound of other people chewing. Or the various smells of their meal. What if they order something horrible? I'd hate that. But even if I was there alone, there would still be smells coming from other tables. Especially if someone ordered something strong and they were sitting nearby.

Well, I could always order an orange juice or something, focus on that smell, and try to tune everything else out.

That's what I usually do when things get overwhelming at the dinner table. Sometimes I put extra soap on my hands before the event so I can focus on that.

Whilst that's true, what if they want to sit on the ends and I have to sit in the middle? That might trigger my claustrophobia. Well, I could always explain that to people.

Besides, I need to sit on the ends just in case I have to go somewhere else quickly (because of my asthma setting off due to the smell of cigarette smoke, either on people's clothes or if someone left a door open nearby). Granted, sometimes I go to the toilets and there's some Febreze machine in there that just makes my asthma worse. I might also want to have that ease of escape just in case I need to freak out somewhere.

On another note, I like going to coffee` shops alone sometimes. Hmm. True, but I also enjoy going with friends. Although, coffee`shops are a bit different to restaurants. I seemed fine the last few times I went out with my friends to restaurants. Although, having said that, I have freaked out in restaurants whilst being with people before. Especially at open buffets. Or that one time I got pizza with people. That did not end well".

*Looks at possible answers*

Uh...

Well, younger me would probably answer "with people" because she hated having to talk to the waitress/waiter. Often she would freeze up when asked what she wanted. I still do on the odd occasion, but I have gotten a lot more confident in those situations.

So that rules out "true now and then" and "only true then". Which leaves me with "true now" and "never true". *Looks at quiz blankly* I guess maybe true now?