Abstract
The broad autism phenotype (BAP) is a set of personality and language characteristics that reflect the phenotypic expression of the genetic liability to autism, in non-autistic relatives of autistic individuals. These characteristics are milder but qualitatively similar to the defining features of autism. A new instrument designed to measure the BAP in adults, the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ), was administered to 86 parents of autistic individuals and 64 community control parents. Sensitivity and specificity of the BAPQ for detecting the BAP were high (>70%). Parents of children with autism had significantly higher scores on all three subscales: aloof personality, rigid personality, and pragmatic language. This instrument provides a valid and efficient measure for characterizing the BAP.
Note: This questionnaire is meant to be administered to individuals with an autistic relative to assess if they have traits that are similar to autism but not enough for a diagnosis, ig?
I would like to read your thoughts on the scale and general concept of this scale. Also, feel free to share your scores!
Link the the actual article.
My biggest complaint to this questionnaire is that they don’t define what is “very rare” vs “rare” vs…etc. My interpretation on it could be different from another autistic and drastically different versus an NT as we could have drastically different interpretations of just the meanings of the possible answers. For instance “very rare” could be once in 2 months or it could be once in 5 years depending on the person.
Yes! The options are pretty vague because they depend respondents having a standard idea of what those abstract ranked answers mean. I need concrete definitions. Otherwise, the individual item’s scale is partially dependent on what I think those words mean in relation to the statistical outcome of respondents that were used to establish the psychometrics of the test. I have confidence that the methods used by researchers that develop these scales are sound and based on statistical analyses paired with valid and tried measures, but I still get hung up on responding to the items.
Funnily (is this even a word?), I completed an executive functioning assessment for my autism therapist about a month ago. After I completed it, I sent her an email that took me ~30 mins to write and proof because I had concerns with the wording of the questions and was worried that the exam might not properly reflect my experiences. There’s one I remember was asking something about, “I get upset quickly or easily over little things.” The available options for the responses were something like the one in the BAP questionnaire, but there were only 3 options. The concern over this item was with the wording of the question. I argued that if I’m easily upset over things, then they aren’t insignificant to me. I could try to guess based on what I’ve seen in other people or what they have told me, but that would based on what they think is insignificant. I rate how significant something is to me by how much it affects me. The item is really assessing circular logic. If I answer “never”, then my logic is sound. If I answer “often”, then I’m not making sense because clearly the things that upset me easily are significant to me.