These tests are so bad for this reason.
There's a lot of questions that are like "do you know how to socialize" and I'll sometimes get extrovert because obviously yes. The question should really be "do you want to" or "do you enjoy".
this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Yesss! Same problem with other tests like ADHD: questions are like "do you often get up and walk around the room in unfitting situations?"
I mean I have the urge but I learned to mask for my whole life. Obvs I'm not DOING it, I just have the strong urge and stopping me takes up all my attention. But that's not part of the question?
Oh this is a huge problem in autism tests too ! "Unfitting/Inappropriate situations" : Buddy, if I knew when the situation was not appropriate for this, I basically wouldn't be autistic 🤣
This goes hand-in-hand with the questions where I'm like, "Well, I did that a lot as a child, but I don't do it anymore now." It'd be nice if the tests provided clarification at the top to indicate if we're supposed to respond "yes" to things that we used to do. Considering that childhood behaviors give more clues than adult ones, it makes sense to answer from the past. But at the same time, the test is using the present tense, so to be technically correct I should answer with what I do today. Right? Maybe they should say, "Do you, or have you ever, done blah blah blah?" The fact that this stuff isn't spelled out goes to show that neurotypicals designed these things.
I imagine that having a big ol', multi-paragraph explanation of these sorts of details might end up skipped by NTs, which maybe plays part in why these tests don't bother with that - designers are seeing it from the NT angle. However, I don't imagine such a text would scare off autistic people - more information to help us navigate an important, novel task? Yes, please! I will read that wall of text as if my life depended on it, because the ambiguous questions leave me stuck far longer than they probably should and any additional clarification would be welcome.
At the very least, maybe the laziest way (from the designers' standpoint) to resolve this, would be to include optional "additional information" boxes so we can relieve these anxieties by explaining the conditional nature of some of our answers. Yeah, a simple scale is easier for documentation and diagnosis, but that sort of simplicity doesn't track with how brains (and many things) actually work. Humans are complicated. Neurodiversity is complicated. Anything related to mental health at all is complicated. Perhaps we shouldn't be looking for the simplest route to understanding each others' brains, but the route that more accurately conveys our brains' nuanced topography.
I am fascinated to try to imagine what an autism test developed by an autistic autism researcher would be like. I suspect it would be a wild ride.
"Would you like spend the next eight hours discussing my extensive collection of model trains?"
"If you were to hand write a complete description of the texture of your least favorite food, how many pages of paper would be required?"
After asking for clarifications about the exact meaning of a question for the 20th time, I think my therapist was already decided about my diagnosis, even before we finished with the rest of the tests.
The real test is taking the test
I hated that question, it's a simple yes or no on a factual statement - either people do tell you or they don't, there's no degrees of agreement. Anyway, turns out I'm autistic.
Just asking for opinions on these forms and questions would probably be a more accurate way to gauge autism anyway. Never met a fellow autist that didn't have something to say about how annoyingly imprecise these forms always are
Evert thought comes with Bonus Context
This wasn't a test for any kind of neurodivergence, but on a test for a job many years ago I was presented with the question "would you ever think about taking money from the cash register?"
So... Clearly the answer they wanted was "no", right? But the act of reading and understanding the question requires you to think about taking money from the cash register! Even if just to reject the idea.
I answered "yes" thinking I was so clever for spotting their trick question. Turns out that was not their intent and I grossly over thought it.
I did not get the job.
There's another layer to this:
First layer is "the question is about whether or not you'll steal".
Second layer is "the question is worded in such a way that yes is the only truthful answer".
Third layer is "will you lie anyways to protect yourself and your job?". Like guessing that the manager would rather deal with liars on their staff than people who might blab about shit that can get the manager in trouble. They want people who will prioritize the job over following labour laws to the letter.