A summary of 25 responses, without a diagnostic threshold.
The CAT-Q total combines the original statements about compensation, masking and assimilation. It records your agreement with those statements; it does not identify an autism diagnosis, a level of social ability, a fixed personality type or an amount of energy used.
Complete total = sum of all 25 recoded responses, from 25 to 175. Reverse items 3, 12, 19, 22 and 24 as 8 minus the response. No total is calculated when any response is skipped. A displayed mean is that same sum divided by 25.
What the total records
- The questionnaire asks about your own experiences in social interactions. Its total brings together responses about learned strategies, monitoring or adjusting your presentation, and blending into interactions that may feel uncomfortable. A larger sum reflects greater endorsement after the original reverse keys, within this particular item set.
- It is a self-report, not observation of what happened or a test of how convincingly you appeared to others. The original instruction does not specify a past-week or past-month window. Keep that general scope when answering, rather than inventing a time period or reconstructing an outside observer’s opinion.
Three parts with unequal numbers of items
- Compensation contains nine items. Masking and Assimilation contain eight each. Their sums therefore have different possible ranges: 9–63, 8–56 and 8–56. A larger Compensation sum than a Masking sum does not, by itself, identify a dominant strategy, because one part contains an extra item.
- The complete total adds all 25 values, giving each item one unit of weight. It is not made by taking an equal-weight average of three subscale means. The displayed means simply put each arithmetic average on a 1–7 scale; they do not turn the parts into equally calibrated measures or population ranks.
A worked example: why 100 is not a cutoff
- If every answer is 4, reversing the five keyed items still gives 4 on each. The total is 25 × 4 = 100, with part sums of 36, 32 and 32. This is a consequence of the response scale, not a clinical threshold or evidence that someone is or is not autistic.
- Mixed answers can produce the same total. Starting from all 4s, changing item 1 to 5 and item 2 to 3 keeps the total at 100 but changes two parts. Read the particular responses if that feels useful; do not assume that equal totals describe equal experiences, needs or circumstances.
What reverse scoring does
- Items 3, 12, 19, 22 and 24 describe a differently keyed direction. The calculation maps 1 to 7, 2 to 6, 3 to 5 and 4 to 4, with the opposite mappings for 5, 6 and 7. It makes the arithmetic follow the published key; it is not a judgement that one answer is more honest or desirable.
- For this reason, selecting 1 everywhere gives 55, not 25, and selecting 7 everywhere gives 145, not 175. The mathematical endpoints require different responses on reverse and forward items. These are checking examples for the calculation, not instructions for obtaining a preferred result.
What cannot be inferred
- The developers’ 2026 public perspective cautions against using CAT-Q scores for diagnostic decision-making or as an intervention outcome. A total cannot establish autism, a probability of autism, a clinical severity band, a need for a particular treatment, or the success of an attempt to appear a certain way.
- The Chinese text here is a new working translation and has no established equivalence to the English edition. Original research and another translation’s results do not automatically validate this implementation. No gender, diagnostic-group or national norm is applied, and your score is not compared with visitors to this site.
Reflect without trying to lower a number
- If you want to consider one interaction privately, ask which parts felt chosen, useful, expected or tiring. The same behaviour can serve different purposes in different settings. There is no required change to make from a score, and no obligation to disclose an identity, force eye contact or stop using a strategy that helps you feel safe.
- Retaking clears the previous record. A change between attempts may reflect interpretation or context and is not evidence of treatment improvement, deterioration or greater authenticity. If you would like professional support, your needs and preferences are enough to begin a conversation; you do not need to reach any CAT-Q number first.
Skipped items and public reading
- An explicit skip withholds the total and the numbers for its part. Complete other parts can still be read. No missing value is replaced with 0, 4 or a guessed average. This is the site’s transparent missing-data policy; it does not create a validated short form.
- All four full guides are free, even when every item is skipped. This public page is identical for everyone and contains no personal responses. Answers and numerical readouts remain in page memory; refreshing, changing language, leaving, clearing or retaking removes them. Public links do not encode a private total.