Outcomes of Children
SDQ
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief questionnaire of behaviour, social and emotional development. The goal of the SDQ is to highlight areas of possible concern. Parents and teachers of all children age 4 years and older who are participants in the NAL Outcomes Study are asked to complete the SDQ.
Completion of the questionnaire should take a few minutes only. It is best to complete the form as candidly as possible to give us an indication of the child’s development. If you are unsure of which response to select choose the answer that best describes the child situation.
Be assured that all response forms will be treated confidentially. Parents and teachers can obtain feedback and copies of their own completed questionnaires through NAL research staff.
There are three parts to the SDQ and the Outcomes study is using the ‘psychological attributes’ part. This consists of 25 statements that are comments on a child’s attributes. Some are positive and some are negative. There are three possible answers for ever attribute – ‘not true’, ‘somewhat true’ and ‘certainly true’. The 25 items form 5 scales.
- Emotional symptoms
- Conduct problems
- Hyperactivity/inattention
- Peer relationship problems
- Prosocial behaviour
Scores are placed into four groups. These groups show how your child’s results compare with the results of other children his/her age. These relate to all areas with the exception of ‘kind and helpful behaviour’. Where results for ‘kind and helpful behaviour’ differ, they are shown in brackets. The four groups are described as -
- ‘close to average’ describes 80% of children
- ‘slightly raised’ (‘slightly low’) describes 10% of children
- ‘high’ (‘low’) describes 5% of children
- ‘very high’ (‘very low’) describes 5% of children
If the child’s results on any of the areas measured are outside of the scores typical for their age (i.e. high/low or very high/very low), a brief report advising you of this will be sent. A brief questionnaire such as the SDQ indicates possible areas of concern and does not replace assessment by an expert. If these results raise concerns you should discuss them with your psychologist.
For more information about the SDQ visit www.sdqinfo.com
To score your SDQ form yourself visit http://www.sdqscore.net/
The SDQ is used internationally and has Australian norms and well as normative data from other countries. The SDQ is also available in the following languages from the SDQ website - Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Gaelic, Gallego, German, Greek, Greenlandic, Gujarati, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Khmer, Korean, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Norwegian, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sami, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Welsh and Xhosa.
www.outcomes.nal.gov.au