questionnaire problems

Post Reply New Topic

I have trouble with questionnaires because they contain assumptions which may not apply properly to me. For example, one item on an autism questionnaire I took asked if I prefer to go to a theater or a museum, as if one answer is more autism-like and the other more NT-like. However, doesn't the NTness of the answer depend on the reason for the preference? For example, some people may be very sensitive to noise, and the theaters they have attended were very noisy, while the museums they have attended may have been quiet, thus preferring museums. However, some people (me) are more sensitive to participation levels, where in museums you are expected to actively walk around the museum, and find the displays, all the time making sure your behavior is right. In a theater, you can be completely passive, just sit there and it comes to you. No one even sees you. Thus I prefer theaters.
However (again), there is the subject matter, which tends to be more intellectual in a museum and more social in a theater. For that, I would choose the museum. So how am I to choose? My real choice would be an intellectual, quiet theater! So what answer should I give? And, no, it does not even out when blended with the other items on the questionnaire either!

Yes. I have had a problem with this very question. When you go to the theatre everyone has a ticket with a seat number so you know where to go and what to do. You just sit there and watch the performance. At a museum you have to negotiate your way around among other people who often have poor museum etiquette in my opinion. There is often no clear method of getting around the exhibits - no number sequence or line to follow. So a theatre is often much easier and less frustrating.

The questionnaires are limited in scope.
Just answer the way your first impression told you, without overthinking or trying to add explanations.
Then, take the results with a grain of salt

I prefer the ones that allow you to skip a question and not give an answer. Like you, I'm really not sure about some scenarios, no precedent in my memory.

For example for the 121 item questionnaire I probably answered like 110 questions.

Ambiguity in question asking is a real bugbear, and related issue is question asking in a clinical setting. Hammers are looking for nails, whether the clinical patient knows this or not.

Imagine a clinician (say) asking an very literal autistic child/adolescent "do you hear voices?" The child, having no knowledge of why the asker is seeking a response to this particular question, honestly and literally answers yes, because he hears the voices of his friends at school, his parents at home, his imaginary friend when they play a game, the actors on the tv, in videos and DVDs. He hears voices everywhere.

The next question is likely to be: Do you think they are speaking to you? Yes says the child, again, smiling at the happy memories of playing an interactive video game.

Do the voices ever scare you and say frightening things? Yes, says the child, thinking of his father's voice threatening to hit him if he keeps answering back..

I wonder if a more mature version of this talking past each other happens to autistic people who have then been misdiagnosed as schizophrenic when they are not. Hammers and nails..

^ That's so true, B19. And a good illustration of the ways I suspect a lot of us answer those kinds of questions.
It's that tick-the-box mentality. Everything just superficially systemised without allowing for any depth or explanation. And it often has the opposite effect to what they intend - like the tendency in psychometric testing to repeatedly ask the same question rephrased, intended to catch out inconsistencies / lies, but instead it comes across as you making a "big deal" out of a minor point and you want to avoid giving a false impression of your insistence, so you change the answer.
These checklists really should stop being so lazy about it.
Edit - Grrr autocorrect.

That you prefer the theatre

It seems you are simply trying to "game" the questionnaire, trying to work out what the "autistic answer" is so you can skew the results to confirm what you are looking for it to confirm. Right there is the biggest problem with both self-diagnosis and diagnosis by questionnaire and why both methods are invalid.

Questionnaires don't put huge significance of individual questions, but instead give weight to a variety of related questions, questions that may not appear related to you, but they are. For example;

"Do you prefer black or white?"
"Do you prefer light colours or dark colours?"
"Is yellow a nicer colour to you than brown?"

These ask the same thing, three ways and from two different angles. If you answer black for the first, but light for the second then you are contradicting yourself and your test will be edged toward the "invalid"....ie the belief that someone is simply supplying random answers. If you answer white, light, yellow then the three answers show a trend. If you answer black, dark, yellow then it's still a trend but not one that is as strong. That's how these things work, so that question about the theatre or the museum will be asked again in a reworded form and it is the sum of all your answers that goes toward a score. So just answer honestly.

I think the questions are based on interpretations. I have always viewed the theater and museum question based on interest, not sensory wise. I based it on if it's a play I want to see or is the museum based on my interest. What is at the museum? What kind of Museum is it? But I don't go to plays often and never seek them out so it's probably a museum since I have gone to them more often than the theater.

You have removed the sentence in bold.



It seems you are using selective editing to fabricate your own argument.

EDITED IN SOME ATTEMPT OF CLARITY.

Last edited by neilson_wheels on 14 Jun 2016, 12:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I have the same problem, the answer is rarely ever so concrete and straight forward as 'this or that'. I don't mind the ones where they give you a sliding scale of say 1-5 or 'sometimes, always' etc but they are still so limiting. I can't complete a lot of questionnaires because it winds me up so much. But in terms of whether or not this is going to help you get diagnosed, I wouldn't worry too much as an assessment in person would mean a lot more.

Women are very complicated creatures anyway, whether on the spectrum or not. (Speaking for myself haha just remembered you're not a woman)

Yes, now I see that my entire argument was based on what I quoted, and nothing else despite the fact that I referenced his whole post in my response. I'll go back and re-post after I've thought about it some more, taking his whole post into consideration.

The answer you should give is that you prefer the theatre as you have stated that is your preference

It seems you are simply trying to "game" the questionnaire, trying to work out what the "autistic answer" is so you can skew the results to confirm what you are looking for it to confirm. Right there is the biggest problem with both self-diagnosis and diagnosis by questionnaire and why both methods are invalid.

Questionnaires don't put huge significance of individual questions, but instead give weight to a variety of related questions, questions that may not appear related to you, but they are. For example;

"Do you prefer black or white?"
"Do you prefer light colours or dark colours?"
"Is yellow a nicer colour to you than brown?"

These ask the same thing, three ways and from two different angles. If you answer black for the first, but light for the second then you are contradicting yourself and your test will be edged toward the "invalid"....ie the belief that someone is simply supplying random answers. If you answer white, light, yellow then the three answers show a trend. If you answer black, dark, yellow then it's still a trend but not one that is as strong. That's how these things work, so that question about the theatre or the museum will be asked again in a reworded form and it is the sum of all your answers that goes toward a score. So just answer honestly.[/quote]

This is a touchy subject. So, I will use myself as an example. I took an emotional intelligence test. The questions were answered quickly, no over thinking.

My results were terrible, bottom one percent. A gnat has a better understanding of human emotions than me.

An outlier usually means there was some type of error. So, I tried again. Answered the questions thoughtfully and carefully. The results were much better, low end of average.

So what does this mean? It means channeling my inner Aspie does not work with emotions. With a little extra effort, I can pass for human.

All tests make assumptions which can cause big errors when they are violated

I find the question a bit pointless itself, because I strongly assume (as I guess we all do) that the 'autistic answer' is 'prefer going to the museum' which again I assume is based on the thought that people with ASD aren't interested in fiction and storytelling. However that exludes all persons who are maybe not the stereotypical prime-number loving IT-specialist trainset-collecting kind of guy and makes someone who happens to not like the theatre very much more autistic than one who can recite every play of Shakespeare by heart and has watched them a dozens of times.

As I said, that's one of the issues of diagnosis by questionnaire. Looking at the quiz in its entirety these questions are probably lumped together.

a) I would rather go to the theater than to a museum.
b) I would rather go to a library than to a party
c) I find myself drawn more strongly to people than to things.
d) I like to collect information about categories of things (e.g., types of cars, birds, trains, plants).
e) I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.

So if you answer "museum" to "a", "party" to "b", "things" to "c", "No" to d) and "No" to e) then in that general category of questions there are a lot of contradicting answers and no real pattern so this person is likely to be simply expressing opinions. So you can answer "autistic" to 4 out of 5, or 3 out of 5 to those questions and that will edge you toward the diagnosed end. So these questions as seen in terms of patterns and groups, there is no massive weight put on any one single answer so if you are autistic you'll more likely come out at the diagnosed end on an overall balance.

My original reply was long, and disappeared when I clicked "preview", so it is gone, and I will never click "preview" again.

So here I will just refer to the questions from a previous post to show my problem:

a) I would rather go to the theater than to a museum.

me: Due to subject matter, I usually choose the museum, but ideally it would be a theater.

b) I would rather go to a library than to a party

me: I hate parties as they are, but ideally I could love a party, as long I do not have to participate.

c) I find myself drawn more strongly to people than to things.

me: I strongly avoid most people, but the one thing by far I would most be drawn to would be a special kind of person.
(Compare with this question: what is found higher off the ground, birds or people? Astronauts are people, and they go much higher than birds!

d) I like to collect information about categories of things (e.g., types of cars, birds, trains, plants).

me: I want to have the information, but I don't like to collect it.

e) I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.

me: It is the NT who finds it difficult to imagine what it is like to be me!
I would find it much easier to imagine what it is like to be an alien than NTs would, but of course NTs can identify with other NTs better than I can.

No, the answers do not balance out; my NT-like answers are for severely non-NT reasons, and there are no "gut reaction" answers.