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Paper versions of the measure can be freely downloaded and reproduced by individuals or non-profit organizations who provide service free of charge.
The measure is under copyright and cannot be modified in any w without prior approval of the author.
1997, 1998
Parent, teacher, and youth self-report (1998) versions
Primary: General mental health assessment Secondary: None identified
Problems with emotional regulation, peer interaction, and conduct; prosocial behaviours; and hyperactivity.
To assess a child's or adolescent's strengths and difficulty in five domains.
This measure may be used to assess children's and adolescents' strengths and difficulties, as an assessment of adolescents' self-awareness of their strengths and difficulties, to compare strengths and difficulties before and after a treatment/intervention program, as a screening measure to identify children or adolescents who may be in need of further evaluation, or to create an individual classroom profile in order to implement appropriate behavioural and educational interventions.
3-point scale from "not true" to "certainly true".
Approximately 10 minutes.
None (parent/teacher/self-report).
Scoring is done manually or electronically either via statistical programs (syntax available for download) or an online scoring platform. Scoring manuals for the various forms are available on the sdqinfo website (please see Online Resources below). There is no indication of any specific qualifications for scoring and interpretation.
The norms, reliability and validity statistics included in each measure profile are those reported by the author(s) of the measure. It is important to note that altering, adding or removing questions from a measure voids these reported statistics, possibly making the revised tool unreliable and invalid.
Norms are available separately from a number of countries, but Canada is not one of them. The U.S. norms were based on 9,878 children and adolescents ages 4 to 17. For each participant, a parent or other adult living in the household responded to the SDQ (92% were biological, adoptive, or step parents; 4.4% were grandparents). The data was collected as part of the National Health Interview Survey (NIHS) supplement from 2001.
The author(s) reports inter-rater (youth-parent, youth-teacher, and parent-teacher) reliabilities of 0.13-0.68, and internal consistency reliabilities (alphas) of 0.61-0.82. Further studies have reported alphas of 0.39-0.89, and inter-rater (youth-parent, teacher-parent, youth-teacher, and mother-father) reliabilities of 0.10-0.60. One systematic review (Kersten et al., 2016) reports a weak evidence of test-retest reliability for 3-5 year-olds.
The author(s) reports evidence of discriminative validity and minimal convergent validity. Further studies have reported good evidence of convergent validity, while reports of sensitivity and specificity have been mixed.
Aitken, M., R. Martinussen and R. Tannock (2017). "Incremental validity of teacher and parent symptom and impairment ratings when screening for mental health difficulties." Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 45(4): 827-837.DOI: 10.1007/s10802-016-0188-y
Bourdon, K.N., Goodman, R., Rae, D.S., Simpson, G., & Koretz, D.S. (2005). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: U.S. normative data and psychometric properties. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 44(6), 557-564.
Davé, S., Nazareth, I., Senior, R., & Sherr, L. (2008). A comparison of Father and Mother Report of Child Behaviour on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 39(4), 399-413.
Goodman, A., & Goodman, R. (2009). Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire as a dimensional measure of child mental health. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 48(4), 400-403.
Goodman, R. (2001). Psychometric properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 40(11), 1337-1345.
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. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 177(6), 534-539.
Goodman, R., Meltzer, H., & Bailey, V. (1998). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A pilot study on the validity of the self-report version. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 7(3), 125-130.
Goodman, R. (1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(5), 581-586.
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(1), 17-24.
Hill, C.R., & Hughes, J.N. (2007). An examination of the convergent and discriminant validity of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. School Psychology Quarterly, 22(3), 380-406.
Janssens, A., & Deboutte, D. (2009). Screening for psychopathology in child welfare: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) compared with the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA). European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 18(11), 691-700.
Kaptein, S., Jansen, D.E.M.C., Vogels, A.G.C., & Reijneveld, S.A. (2008). Mental health problems in children with intellectual disability: Use of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 52(2), 125-131.
Kersten, P., Czuba, K., McPherson, K., Dudley, M., Elder, H., Tauroa, R., & Vandal, A. (2015). A systematic review of evidence for the psychometric properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 0165025415570647.
Mathai, J., Anderson, P., & Bourne, A. (2004). Comparing psychiatric diagnoses generated by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire with diagnoses made by clinicians. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 38(8), 639-643.
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. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 43(4), 437-448.
