Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the camouflaging autistic trait questionnaire

Abstract

Social camouflaging is now coming to the attention in studies related to autism. It is suggested that social camouflaging may be related to late or miss diagnosis of females with autism and mental health issues. To learn more about autistic individual’s tendency to camouflage, Hull and her team in 2019 developed a self-reported measure on camouflaging, the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire. This present study would like to explore and pioneer the psychometric properties of the Chinese version Camouflaging Autistic Trait Questionnaire in the Chinese context. The Chinese version Camouflaging Autistic Trait Questionnaire was administered online to 42 autistics, age range from 18 to 38, and 704 nonautistic adults, age range from 17 to 75. Both samples were found to have acceptable to high internal consistencies and acceptable stabilities were established for the test-retest reliabilities. T-test were computed between the autistic and non-autistic samples. The autistic sample demonstrated a significantly higher total camouflaging scores, Compensation and Assimilation factor scores than the non-autistic sample, but not for the Masking factor scores. Gender comparisons within samples were examined. The autistic females showed a significantly higher total camouflaging scores and all factor scores than the autistic males. In contrary, the non-autistic males showed a significantly higher total camouflaging score, Compensation and Assimilation factor scores than non-autistic females. Exploratory factor analysis results deviated from Hull et al. (2019) research, suggesting eight- and five- factor structure in the autistic and non-autistic samples. The present study provided a partial preliminary support to the psychometric properties for the Chinese version Camouflaging Autistic Trait Questionnaire. Future developmental works are necessary.