Autism tests gauge traits equally well in girls and boys

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Three widely used tests for assessing autism measure trait severity equally well in girls and boys, according to the largest study addressing this question to date1.

The tests — the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) — show small differences in how they rate autism traits in girls compared with boys, but those differences should not keep the tests from routine clinical use, say lead investigator Somer Bishop, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Researchers have questioned if diagnostic tests miss autism traits in girls and contribute to the condition’s sex ratio of four girls for every boy. Previous studies have suggested that some tests underestimate the severity of traits in girls. Most, however, are too small to control for intelligence, age, language ability and other factors that can influence a child’s scores.

The new study included almost 9,000 autistic children, which is large enough to account for these factors, Bishop says.