Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (KIND), Centre for Psychiatry Research, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet & Stockholm Health Care Services, Region Stockholm, Gävlegatan 22B, 113 30, Stockholm, Sweden.
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Stockholm Health Care Services, Region Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 May;54(5):1749-1764. doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-05909-8. Epub 2023 Feb 9.
Given that camouflaging has been suggested to contribute to delayed diagnosis and mental health problems among autistic people, validated measures of the construct are needed. This study describes the psychometric evaluation of the Swedish adaptation of the self-reported Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q) in autistic (n = 100) and general population (n = 539) samples aged 10 to 83 years. Analyses indicated good-to-excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Construct validity was supported by autistic participants scoring higher than non-autistic, and autistic females scoring higher than autistic males on the measure. Also as expected, camouflaging was associated with theoretically linked traits, including autistic behaviors and depressive symptoms. On the other hand, the factor structure of the original CAT-Q did not provide a good fit in the Swedish data set, and validity issues were found, particularly in children younger than 15 years, warranting further investigation of the construct validity of the scale. Different age trajectories were observed, where camouflaging behaviors decreased during adulthood in non-autistic people but remained at an elevated level among autistic people.
鉴于伪装被认为会导致自闭症患者诊断延迟和心理健康问题，因此需要验证该结构的有效测量方法。本研究描述了在 10 至 83 岁的自闭症（n=100）和普通人群（n=539）样本中，自我报告的自闭症特质伪装问卷（CAT-Q）瑞典语适应性的心理计量学评估。分析表明，该问卷具有良好到优秀的内部一致性和重测信度。自闭症患者的得分高于非自闭症患者，自闭症女性的得分高于自闭症男性，这支持了该问卷的结构有效性。此外，伪装与理论上相关的特征有关，包括自闭症行为和抑郁症状。另一方面，原始 CAT-Q 的因子结构在瑞典数据集上拟合不佳，并且存在有效性问题，特别是在 15 岁以下的儿童中，需要进一步研究该量表的结构有效性。还观察到不同的年龄轨迹，在非自闭症人群中，伪装行为在成年期下降，但在自闭症人群中仍处于较高水平。
