Measuring Autistic Burnout: Psychometric Properties of the Autistic Burnout Severity Items in French

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Abstract

Autistic burnout is increasingly recognized in the literature, yet no validated French-language measure existed. This study examined the psychometric properties of a French adaptation of the Autistic Burnout Severity Items (ABSI-Fr) in a sample of autistic adults with lived experience of burnout (N = 393, drawn from a larger sample of 484). Exploratory factor analysis (polychoric correlations, minres extraction, Promax rotation) identified a six-factor, 26-item structure spanning exhaustion, social withdrawal, memory, cognitive slowing, autistic self-awareness, and emotional/somatic distress, differing from the original four-factor ABSI and from existing measures of autistic burnout. Internal consistency was satisfactory (α =.694-.867; ω =.646-.809), and a Schmid-Leiman transformation supported a hierarchical structure justifying both total and subscale scores (ωH =.762, ECV =.47, PUC =.852). The total score correlated significantly with depression, anxiety, general burnout, camouflaging, and alexithymia, albeit modestly, and was not significantly associated with autistic traits (AQ-10). The structure replicated closely in the full sample (N = 484). These findings provide the first evidence for a reliable, multidimensional measure of autistic burnout in French, offering French-speaking clinicians and autistic communities a tool to name and assess this experience; diagnostic thresholds are addressed in a companion paper.

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