RAADS-R test for adults: 80 questions, free results

The RAADS-R (Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised) is widely used as a self-report tool for identifying autism in adults. Published by Riva Ariella Ritvo and colleagues in 2011, it was designed for people who weren't identified in childhood, which is why it remains relevant to the growing number of adults now seeking answers about their neurodivergence later in life than a formal diagnosis would typically have been expected.

You can take the full 80-question RAADS-R right here for free. We also offer the AQ-10 (10 questions, 2 minutes) and AQ-50 (50 questions) if you prefer a shorter screening. All results are instant and processed entirely in your browser.

What the RAADS-R Is

The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised was published in 2011 by Riva Ariella Ritvo and colleagues in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. It consists of 80 items answered on a four-option lifetime pattern scale: "True now and when I was young," "True only now, not when I was young," "True only when I was younger than 16," and "Never true." Rather than a single agree or disagree, this format lets a respondent indicate whether a trait has been present their whole life, has emerged more recently, was present only in childhood, or has never applied. The 80 items are grouped into four domains: Language, Social Relatedness, Sensory-Motor, and Circumscribed Interests.

What the Four Domains Measure

• Language: Pragmatic communication skills, how you use language in social contexts, including sarcasm, idioms, and conversational timing.
• Social Relatedness: How you navigate relationships, including reading body language, understanding unwritten social rules, and managing group dynamics.
• Sensory-Motor: Sensory sensitivities to sound, light, texture, and taste, plus motor patterns including repetitive movement and coordination differences.
• Circumscribed Interests: Intense, focused interests that may dominate your time and attention, often a source of both strength and social friction.

What a high score in Language suggests

A high Language domain score suggests pragmatic language, the social use of language rather than its grammar or vocabulary, feels effortful. That can show up as taking idioms and sarcasm literally, missing the underlying point of a story or joke, or being told your voice or rhythm of speech is unusual. It does not suggest a language delay or a vocabulary problem; the RAADS-R's Language items are specifically about the social layer of communication, not the mechanics of it.

What a high score in Social Relatedness suggests

A high Social Relatedness score suggests that reading and navigating relationships, including body language, unwritten social rules, and group dynamics, takes conscious effort rather than coming automatically. This is the largest domain on the RAADS-R, and a high score here often accompanies a history of feeling like other people received an instruction manual for social life that you never got, along with exhaustion after social situations that others seem to find restful.

What a high score in Sensory-Motor suggests

A high Sensory-Motor score suggests sensory input, sound, light, texture, or smell, is experienced more intensely than it appears to be for people around you, along with possible differences in coordination or repetitive movement. People with a high score here often describe needing to leave a room to "reset" after too much noise or light, or being described as clumsy despite feeling perfectly coordinated in movements they find comfortable.

What a high score in Circumscribed Interests suggests

A high Circumscribed Interests score suggests intense, narrowly focused interests that can dominate your attention and a strong need for things to be organized, predictable, or done in a particular order. It also often accompanies real distress when that order is disrupted. This domain captures both a genuine strength, the depth and durability of focused interest, and a genuine cost, difficulty tolerating disruption to routine or to an in-progress train of thought.

How long it takes and how to answer

Most people take about 20 to 30 minutes to complete all 80 questions, which is longer than either the AQ-10 or the AQ-50 because each item asks you to weigh a lifetime pattern rather than a simple agreement. Answer using the four-option scale as written: "True now and when I was young" if a trait has been consistent across your life, "True only now, not when I was young" if it emerged later, "True only when I was younger than 16" if you have since changed or learned to manage it, and "Never true" if it has never applied. Because several items are reverse-scored, answer each statement on its own terms rather than trying to guess which direction it counts toward your total; the scoring logic accounts for the direction so you do not have to.

Notes for clinicians

Ritvo and colleagues (2011) designed the RAADS-R as a tool to assist a clinician's diagnostic process, not to replace clinical judgment or function as a stand-alone instrument. If you are a clinician using it, or considering using it, with a client, the original paper's intended use is as one input alongside a developmental history, direct observation, and other standardized measures, with particular attention to how the lifetime pattern scale can surface traits a client has since learned to manage or mask. A single administration in a browser, including the version on this page, is not a substitute for that fuller clinical process.

How We Score It

Our version uses the same four-point lifetime pattern scale as the original instrument: "True now and when I was young" scores 3, "True only now, not when I was young" scores 2, "True only when I was younger than 16" scores 1, and "Never true" scores 0. A number of items are reverse-scored, meaning a response that sounds like agreement is actually flipped before being added to your total, because the statement itself describes a non-autistic pattern (for example, "I can chat and make small talk with people"). Your total score can range from 0 to 240 across all 80 items, and each of the four domains is also reported on its own scale based on how many items belong to it. Our tool marks a total score of 65 or above as meeting the threshold, which is the same cutoff used in the original 2011 paper, so our implementation and the published research agree here. We additionally flag scores of 130 or above with stronger language in our results, but that second line is our own way of describing a score well above threshold; it is not a distinction drawn in the original paper itself.

What the Original Study Found

Ritvo and colleagues built the RAADS-R specifically to address a gap in adult autism screening: most instruments in use at the time had been developed for or validated on children, and researchers suspected that adults who had spent years compensating for their traits would score differently on tools not designed to capture that history. The lifetime pattern scale was their answer to that problem, letting a respondent credit traits that were true growing up even if they no longer present the same way today. The paper set 65 or above as the score indicating clinically significant traits in adults, out of a possible total of 240 across all 80 items.

The choice to build four separate domains, rather than a single undifferentiated score, mirrors the same design decision made in the AQ-50. In both cases, the researchers wanted a result that could point toward which specific areas, whether that is sensory sensitivity, language, social relatedness, or intense interests, were driving a person's total, rather than a single number that could hide very different underlying patterns behind the same total score.

What It Cannot Tell You

• It is self-report across 80 questions, which asks a lot of self-observation, and self-observation is exactly what masking makes difficult for many autistic adults.
• It is not a diagnosis. Even a very high total score is a signal to pursue an evaluation, not a substitute for one.
• It does not verify the childhood recollections it asks about. The lifetime pattern scale relies on memory, and memory of childhood experience is not always reliable, particularly across decades.
• It does not account for co-occurring conditions. Anxiety, ADHD, PTSD, and other conditions can raise scores on items related to sensory sensitivity or social relatedness without the person being autistic.
• Eighty questions still cannot capture every facet of how autism presents; it is thorough relative to the AQ-10 or AQ-50, but it remains a questionnaire, not an observation of you in real social situations over time.
• It cannot tell you whether the traits it identifies require support in your specific circumstances. Two people can score well above 65 while one needs formal accommodations and the other does not; the score describes the presence of traits, not the level of support any individual needs.

Who the RAADS-R Is For

The RAADS-R was built for adults, not children, and it works best for people who want the most detailed self-assessment available on this site before deciding whether to pursue a formal evaluation. Because the response scale explicitly separates childhood from adulthood, it tends to feel more accurate to adults who have spent years learning to mask their traits, including many autistic women and others with high-masking presentations, than instruments that only ask how you feel right now. If you are screening a toddler or young child instead, see the M-CHAT-R-based screening for kids.

It is also a good fit for anyone who has already taken the AQ-10 or AQ-50 and wants a screening designed around lived history rather than present-day agreement. Someone who developed strong coping strategies over many years may answer AQ-style questions in a way that understates how things were before those strategies existed. The RAADS-R's "true only when I was younger than 16" option exists precisely for that situation, giving credit to a pattern that used to be visible even if it no longer is. That makes it a natural next step for people whose AQ-10 or AQ-50 score came back lower than expected despite feeling that autism still describes them, and it is one reason the RAADS-R shows up so often in discussions of late diagnosis among adults.

Because it takes longer to complete than the other screenings on this site, the RAADS-R is best approached without rushing. Setting aside 15 to 20 minutes in a quiet moment, rather than answering between other tasks, tends to produce answers that better reflect how you actually experience each item, and the same is true for reading back over your results afterward instead of glancing at the total score and moving straight on to the next thing on your busy list. A calm, unhurried pass through the questions is worth the extra few minutes it costs.

What a "Meets" or "Below" Result Means

A total score of 65 or above meets the threshold used in the original research, meaning your answers describe a lifetime pattern consistent with what the study associated with autism. That result is worth taking seriously enough to explore further, whether through reading how we explain results in more depth or speaking with a professional who can conduct a full evaluation. A total below 65 means your answers did not reach that pattern on this occasion. It does not rule autism out, especially if your domain scores were uneven, if you found several items hard to answer honestly, or if some of your "Never true" answers reflect a trait you have worked hard to change rather than one that was never present. See our method for the exact thresholds we use across every screening on this site.

Frequently Asked Questions