The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R)

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What does this test results mean.

http://www.aspietests.org/raads/questio ... cale=en_GB



Total score:192.0
Language:18.0
Social relatedness:87.0
Sensory/motor:51.0
Circumscribed interests:36.0

I don't know the ins and outs of this test but at a quick glance your total score of 192 means you are above the 65 point threshold for expected ASD. Meaning, if you don't have a official diagnosis yet, you might want to consult with a professional if you are curious or having a hard time dealing with social life / communication (need support in one or more domains).

"The total RAADS scores ranged from 44 to 227 in the ASD subjects and from 0 to 65 in the comparison groups. By ROC curve analysis, we determined that the best threshold for distinguishing between the two groups was a score of 65. Using this value, all 578 comparison subjects were correctly predicted with no “false positives” (specificity = 100%)."

Does this answer your question? If not, can you be a little bit more specific.

Last edited by ErwinNL on 28 Aug 2017, 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You are above all the thresholds, so it is very likely that you have autism.

ErwinNL

Thanks for breaking it down for me..

The thing that has always puzzled me about the RAADS is that, as in that summary page marine414 posted, it gives the average score of NTs as 84.2 or 85.3 (males, females). How is that supposed to be compatible with the threshold score for suspected ASD being 65, and that "Using this value, all 578 comparison subjects were correctly predicted with no “false positives” "?

This test, like the AQ (The Autism Spectrum Quotient) test, is a self-screening instrument that measures how many autistic traits an individual shows. The higher you score the more statistically likely it is to be on the Autism Spectrum, however these traits are not unique to the Autism Spectrum and also appear in Neurotypicals and people with other kind of disorders like Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD). For example; Some NTers like to be alone as well when they are overloaded or go to museums instead of theaters but that doesn't make them autistic. It is the number and intensity of traits and when they emerged that is important to make a diagnosis.

When you do research and collect the scores of a large enough group (both ASD and control) you can plot them on a graph and draw two (or three if you split male/female) bell curves like the figures shown below. You can see that there is an overlap between the control and ASD group, this happens because of the shared traits. If you score lower then 65 points (green) then it is statistically unlikely that you are on the Autism Spectrum, between 65 and 92 (in blue) it could be either way and above 92 it is statistically likely that you are on the spectrum. In the end it is safer to set 65 points as the threshold because it almost never happens that people on the spectrum score lower then this, when you score 84 (taken from the example) you might be Neurotypical, most likely even (only 1 in 68 people is on the spectrum) but it does happen that people on the spectrum score the same. It is better to be safe then sorry




The same overlap can be seen in the AQ test:



My score on the RAADS-R: 185, on the AQ: 43 and I have an official diagnosis.

Remember this is a screening test, if you want to be sure you need to consult a professional for assessment!

Last edited by ErwinNL on 29 Aug 2017, 5:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

ErwinN: Well, maybe I am misinterpreting the sentence

"The total RAADS scores ranged from 44 to 227 in the ASD subjects and from 0 to 65 in the comparison groups."

which, presumably, was a quote from the RAADS paper. Read literally (as I am wont to do!), it appears to make the very strong (and seemingly implausible) claim that no individual in the comparison groups scored higher than 65. It seems to be in direct conflict with their reporting that the average scores in the NT groups were 84.2 (male) and 85.3 (female). They also appear to make the (very strong) claim that using 65 as the threshold, they got no false positives when they tested 578 comparison subjects. Seemingly meaning that again they are claiming that no NT subject got a score higher than 65.

I agree absolutely with your statistical discussion about probabilities. The thing that puzzles me is the seemingly very strong statements that they appear to make that contradict all the reasonable statistical estimates and that contradict their own data.

Edit: I just located the original paper (Ritvo et al.). It is true that one needs to distinguish between what is said in their paper, and the findings from the online test linked by Marine414. As I understand it, the linked test is the same as the one discussed in the paper. The sample size in the online results is much larger than that discussed in the original paper. Now, in the original paper they really do say that all 578 comparison subjects scored less than or equal to 65. On the other hand, the distribution curve for NT scores in the online results is very broad, and if that curve is a reasonably accurate indication of the true distribution in the NT population, then the probability that 578 randomly-selected NT subjects would all get 65 or less is incredibly tiny. Something somewhere doesn't seem right.

I've wondered the exact same thing. I stumbled upon the aspietests website a few months ago when it first occurred to me that Asperger's describes me pretty well. I signed up for the site, and identified as not having ASD. I then proceeded to take the tests and score well over threshold for all the tests. I suspect that what is being represented as 'not-ASD' probably includes a disproportionately high number of people who do have ASD and just don't know it yet. After all, most 'normal' people would have no reason to ever sign up for an account at aspietests without thinking there's at least a chance they're aspie, and speaking for myself, I'm reluctant to identify as an aspie without a definite answer.

If I remember correctly, when you sign up for the site it asks you which diagnoses you have and there is a self diagnosed and an unsure/might have option so it should help eliminate some of that.

That is a good point you make; there could be a self-selection effect that a disproportionate fraction (compared with the population at large) of those who stumble upon and take the online test may have ASD. Still, I am puzzled by the apparent sharpness of the cutoff that the authors reported.

Something else I find odd about the test is the way the questions are posed. The only options involve stating in absolute terms that something is either true or not. What does "true" mean in this context? Suppose one wants to answer to a question that it is "partially true," or that it captures some, but not all, of one's feelings about the issue? How to answer then?

And the division into "only when I was younger than 16" or "only now," or both, seems artificial and, at least in my case, I feel it fails to capture the essence of the situation. There are very few things where I feel much has changed over the years (and I am now much older than 16 than I care to admit!!). Why the fixation on 16, in particular? It seems to me that the people who came up with this test missed the chance to get more useful information by placing far too much emphasis on the age-16 divide, which to me is pretty meaningless, and far too little emphasis on nuances of responses to the questions they are asking.

Regarding the sharpness of the cutoff, I was able to find some additional research papers where the cutoff wasn't so sharp. I can't find the details right now, but I remember one was from a Swedish study. It showed that several NT's scored over the 65 cutoff. Not many, but definitely more than the zero from the original study. What would be very interesting would be to determine if the NT's that scored over 65 are actually ASD and just had not been diagnosed. As far as I know that was not within the scope of the study. For the AQ test, the original paper stated that 25 students out of a group of about 500 scored above the 32 cutoff. 11 of those students agreed to be evaluated by a doctor for Asperger's, and 7 of those met the clinical diagnosis requirements if I remember correctly. That information seems to say that the test is actually fairly good as a 'self-diagnosis' tool.

I also had issues with the all or nothing aspect of the answers, but I don't think we're alone. I've seen that comment made many many times in the forum as I've looked for more info. Probably something to do with over-analyzing everything, black/white thinking, perfectionism, literal thinking, misunderstanding intentions, etc. etc. As I was going over the tests with my wife, she would frequently say 'Yeah, you do that.', but I'd say, 'I don't know, I do this but I don't do that.'