Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Psychometric Comparability of Self-Report by Children Aged 9–10 versus 11 Years on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

  • Published:
Child Indicators Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 26 March 2019

This article has been updated

Abstract

The 25-item Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a popular screening instrument that assesses childhood psychopathology and prosocial behaviour. While the value of acquiring multi-informant perspectives in the assessment of childhood psychopathology is recognised, the use of the self-report version of the questionnaire is recommended only for children aged 11 years and older. This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric comparability of self-report on the SDQ by children aged 9–10 years relative to children aged 11 years using item response modelling. Item response models were used in a community sample of 7959 children to investigate the structure, item characteristics, and age differences related to self-report by children aged 9–10 years (n = 6004), relative to children aged 11 years (n = 1955), on the SDQ. Internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial factors explained the covariance of the questionnaire items. There were statistically significant age-related differences on only two items (the “worries” and “distractible” items), but these differences were small in magnitude and did not affect the precision of measurement of the SDQ. Self-report by children aged 9 and 10 years on the SDQ is psychometrically comparable to reports by children aged 11 years after controlling for differences in latent severity. This work expands the utility of the self-report SDQ to children aged as young as 9 years.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

  • 26 March 2019

    The below statements are missing in the original article.

Abbreviations

a-parameter:

Discrimination parameter

b-parameter:

Difficulty parameters

CFA:

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

CFI:

Comparative Fit statistic

DIF:

Differential Item Functioning

IRF:

Item Response Function

IRT:

Item Response Theory

RMSEA:

Root Mean Square Error of Approximation

SDQ:

Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

SEE:

Standard Error of the Estimate

TIF:

Test Information Function

TLI:

Tucker Lewis index

θ:

Latent severity

References

  • Achenbach, T. M., McConaughy, S. H., & Howell, C. T. (1987). Child/adolescent behavioral and emotional problems: Implications of cross informant correlations for situational specificity. Psychological Assessment, 24, 293–300.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 57, 289–300.

    Google Scholar 

  • Curvis, W., McNulty, S., & Qualter, P. (2014). The self-report strengths and difficulties for use by 6- to 10-year-old children in the UK. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 53, 131–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Riso, D., Salcuni, S., Chessa, D., Raudino, A., Lis, A., & Altoe, G. (2010). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ). Early evidence of its reliability and validity in a community sample of Italian children. Pers Indiv Differ, 49, 570–575.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dickey, W., & Blumberg, S. (2004). Revisiting the factor structure of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire: United States, 2001. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2004, 1159–1167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, R. (1997). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581–586.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, A., & Goodman, R. (2011). Population mean scores predict child mental disorder rates: Validating SDQ prevalence estimators in Britain. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52, 100–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, R., & Scott, S. (1999). Comparing the strengths and difficulties questionnaire and the child behavior checklist: Is small beautiful? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 27, 17–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, R., Ford, T., Simmons, H., Gatward, R., & Meltzer, H. (2000). Using the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) to screen for child psychiatric disorders in a community sample. Brit J Psychiat, 177, 534–539.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, A., Lamping, D. L., & Ploubidis, G. B. (2010). When to use broader internalising and externalising subscales instead of the hypothesised five subscales on the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ): Data from British parents, teachers and children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 1179–1191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodyer, I. M. (2012). Mathematical models as an aid for improving the validity of descriptive psychiatry. British Journal of Psychiatry, 201, 335–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green, H., McGinnity, A., Meltzer, H., Ford, T., & Goodman, R. (2004). Mental health of children and young people in Great Britain (p. 2004). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hagquist, C. (2007). The psychometric properties of the self-reported SDQ: An analysis of Swedish data based on the Rasch model. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1289–1301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hambleton, R. K., Swaminathan, H., & Rogers, H. J. (1991). Fundamentals of item response theory. Newbury Park: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • He, J.-P., Burstein, M., Schmitz, A., & Merikangas, K. R. (2013). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ): The factor structure and scale validation in U.S. adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 41, 583–595.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs, M. J., Anderson, T. M., Slade, T., & Andrews, G. (2014). Relationship between measurement invariance and age-related differences in the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 152, 306–312.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim-Cohen, J., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T. E., Harrington, H., Milne, B. J., & Poulton, R. (2003). Prior juvenile diagnoses in adults with mental disorder: Developmental follow-back of a prospective longitudinal cohort. Archives of General Psychiatry, 60, 709–717.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kobor, A., Takacs, A., & Urban, R. (2013). The Bifactor model of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 29, 299–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koskelainen, M., Sourander, A., & Kaljonen, A. (2000). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire among Finnish school-aged children and adolescents. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 9, 277–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lahey, B. B., Rathouz, P. J., van Hulle, C., Urbano, R. C., Krueger, R. F., Applegate, B., Garriock, H. A., Chapman, D. A., & Waldman, I. D. (2008). Testing structural models of DSM-IV symptoms of common forms of child and adolescent psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 36, 187–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laurens, K. R., Hobbs, M. J., Sunderland, M., Green, M. J., & Mould, G. L. (2012). Psychotic-like experiences in a community sample of 8,000 children aged 9 to 11 years: An item response theory analysis. Psychological Medicine, 42, 1495–1506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lawrence, D., Johnson, S., Hafekost, J., Boterhoven De Haan, K., Sawyer, M., Ainley, J., Zubrick, S.R., (2015). The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents. Report on the second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Commonwealth Government of Australia, Canberra.

  • McCrory, C., & Layte, R. (2012). Testing competing models of the strengths and difficulties Questionnaire's (SDQ's) factor structure for the parent-informant instrument. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 882–887.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meade, A. W. (2010). A taxonomy of effect size measures for differential functioning of items and scales. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 728–743.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muris, P., Meesters, C., Eijkelenboom, A., & Vincken, M. (2004). The self-report version of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire: Its psychometric properties in 8- to 13-year-old non-clinical children. Brit J Clin Psychol, 43, 437–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Niclasen, J., Skovgaard, A. M., Andersen, A.-M. N., Somhovd, M. J., & Obel, C. (2013). A confirmatory approach to examining the factor structure of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ): A large scale cohort study. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 41, 355–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Samejima, F., 1969. Estimation of latent ability using a response patter of graded scores. Psychometrika Monograph 34 (Monograph Suppl. 17).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stone, L. L., Otten, R., Engels, R. C. M. E., Vermulst, A. A., & Janssens, J. M. A. M. (2010). Psychometric properties of the parent and teacher versions of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire for 4- to 12-year-olds: A review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 13, 254–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thissen, D. (2001). IRT-LR-DIF v2.0b: Software for the computation of the statistics involved in item response theory likelihood ratio tests for differential item functioning. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thissen, D., & Wainer, H. (2001). Test scoring. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • van den Ende, J., Verhulst, F. C., & Henning, T. (2012). Agreement of informants on emotional and behavioral problems from childhood to adulthood. Psychological Assessment, 24, 293–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Leeuwen, K., Meerschaert, T., Bosmans, G., de Medts, L., & Braet, C. (2006). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire in a community sample of young children in Flanders. Journal of Psychological Assessment, 22.

  • Van Roy, B., Veenstra, M., & Clench-Aas, J. (2008). Construct validity of the five-factor strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) in pre-, early, and late adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 1304–1312.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright, A., Krueger, R. F., Hobbs, M. J., Markon, K. E., Eaton, N. R., & Slade, T. (2013). The structure of psychopathology: Toward an expanded quantitative empirical model. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122, 281–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety and Depression, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Megan J. Hobbs

  2. CRUfAD, Level 4 O’Brien Centre, 394-404 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010, Australia

    Megan J. Hobbs

  3. School of Psychology and Counselling, and Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Wing Level 5, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove QLD, Brisbane, 4059, Australia

    Kristin R. Laurens

  4. Research Unit for Schizophrenia Epidemiology, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Kristin R. Laurens

  5. Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK

    Kristin R. Laurens

Authors
  1. Megan J. Hobbs
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kristin R. Laurens
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Megan J. Hobbs or Kristin R. Laurens.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

(DOCX 444 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hobbs, M.J., Laurens, K.R. Psychometric Comparability of Self-Report by Children Aged 9–10 versus 11 Years on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Child Ind Res 13, 301–318 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-019-09633-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-019-09633-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation