The French version of the autism-spectrum quotient in adolescents: a cross-cultural validation study.

Sonié et al. (2013) translated the Autism-Spectrum Quotient into French. They tested it on adolescents with ASD, other psychiatric diagnoses, and typical teens.

Parents filled out the 50-item questionnaire. The team checked if scores cleanly split the groups.

A cut-off of 26 caught ASD with 89 % sensitivity and 98 % specificity. That means very few false positives and few missed cases.

The French AQ also scored teens with ASD higher than those with ADHD or depression, so it is not just flagging general psych problems.

The result lines up with Wakabayashi et al. (2007) in Japan and Auyeung et al. (2008) in the UK. All three studies show the AQ cleanly splits ASD from typical kids across cultures and ages.

Sun et al. (2019) in China and Fitzpatrick et al. (2017) in Spain found the same pattern with their own language versions of similar tools. Cross-cultural validation keeps repeating the same good news.

Smit et al. (2019) looks like a contradiction: they found the Social Communication Questionnaire failed in UK community clinics. The difference is the tool, not the kids. The SCQ is shorter and less teen-focused, so it missed cases the French AQ caught.

If you serve French-speaking families, hand them the adolescent AQ and use 26 as your red-flag line. You can feel confident that a score at or above that number almost always points to ASD and not just another diagnosis. Keep the English or Japanese versions in your back pocket for other families; the same cut-off logic applies.