From their SCQ scores, the researchers classified about 9 percent of the boys and about 5 percent of the girls as being at risk for autism. Of these children, 112 had a full diagnostic assessment. A random sample of 160 of children who did not score in the ‘at-risk’ range also completed the assessment.
The ratio of boys to girls who went on to be diagnosed with autism is even higher than that of the at-risk group: About 25 percent of the boys received an autism diagnosis, compared with 7.4 percent of the girls.
This result hints that the diagnostic assessment is skewed to finding boys with the condition. Girls who received an autism diagnosis overlapped cleanly with those who met the SCQ cutoff — suggesting the screen is accurate for girls.
