The early detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is very important. However, there is a lack of ASD early signs screening instruments in Brazil. The objective of this work is to report the developing procedures and seek for initial evidence of validity of the Questionário para Rastreamento de Sinais Precoces do Transtorno do Espectro Autista (QR-TEA). The QR-TEA is an instrument for use in the general population and for self-fulfillment of the parents of children between 24-36 months of age. The questionnaire items were developed based on the behaviorial categories established in the construct operational definition, literature review and other instruments that evaluate ASD. The scale of responses is of the dichotomous type (presence or absence of symptoms). After its development, the items were evaluated by four health professionals with clinical experience in ASD. The Content Validity Index, the Kappa index and the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient were used to evaluate the agreement between the experts on the representativeness of the items. In addition, redundancy between items was verified and the experts also suggested content changes. It was also conducted an semantic analysys of the items with the target audience (2 fathers and 4 moms). The results show a relationship between the QR-TEA items content, indicating content validity evidence. Further studies should be conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the instrument and to seek new evidence of validity in both clinical and non-clinical samples.