UCLA

Approximately 3-4 boys for every girl meet the clinical criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in studies of community diagnostic patterns and in studies of autism using samples of convenience. However, girls with autism have been hypothesized to be underdiagnosed, possibly because they may present with differing symptom profiles as compared to boys. This secondary data analysis used the National Database of Autism Research (NDAR) to examine in what ways gender, symptom profiles, and age are associated with one another in a gold standard assessment of autism symptoms, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule II (ADOS-II; Lord, 2012). ADOS-II scores from 6183 children ages 6-14 years from 78 different studies in NDAR indicated that age and gender were significant predictors of total algorithm, restrictive and repetitive behavioral, and social communicative difficulties composite severity scores. Confirmatory factor analysis also determined that the ADOS-II’s algorithmic variables’ structure differed between the male and female subsamples, such that a partial metric invariance model showed females responding poorly, accuracy wise, to the current algorithmic structure than males on the restrictive and repetitive behavioral total.