Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Characteristics in Students Taking Undergraduate Computing Courses

The incidence rate of autism spectrum condition (ASC) has increased significantly in recent decades, as awareness of the condition and its impacts increases amongst clinicians, parents, and the general population. Medical literature has proposed that there may be a relationship between ASC and participation in the computing field. This study tests for the prevalence of autism spectrum condition traits measured by delivering the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) to a population of undergraduate computer science students. We examine the relationships between AQ scores and students taking undergraduate computer science classes, sex, socioeconomic status, and parents in the computing industry. Additionally, we compared the AQ scores of our participants with publicly available control data. As in previous studies of ASC, we saw a noteworthy increase in AQ score amongst participants over the average general population rate reported in the literature. We saw a statistically significant increase in mean AQ score across most demographic metrics, including both higher male and female means and higher means in the topmost socioeconomic classes. This supports existing evidence for an increase in the prevalence of ASC amongst the general population, as well as for a relationship between ASC and participation in computing. Advisor: Stephen Cooper