We begin with thanking the authors for their insightful critiques. We agree with the author that the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) (Hurley et al.
2007) was not developed to be administered to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As a matter of note, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and Social Responsiveness Scale2-Adult Self report (SRS2-AS) were developed to measure a wide range of quantitative autistic traits (QATs), including those found in ASD, though the Subthreshold Autism Trait Questionnaire (SATQ) (Kanne et al.
2012) also purports to assess subthreshold ASD traits in a general population, but not in the ASD subjects alone. We used the ASD sample to assess
construct validity of these questionnaires. From theoretical and empirical consideration (Kanne et al.
2012), a questionnaire measuring QATs is expected to be associated with case–control status. That is, the higher one’s score, the more likely he/she is an ASD case. In our study, the ability of the questionnaire to identify such association was used as an index of
construct validity. …
