The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a behavioral screening
questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix of ...
for children and adolescents ages 2 through 17 years old, developed by child psychiatrist
Robert N. Goodman in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Nor ...
. Versions of it are available for use for no fee. The combination of its brevity and noncommercial distribution have made it popular among clinicians and researchers. There are more than 3000 peer-reviewed articles using it that are indexed in PubMed alone. Overall, the SDQ has proved to have satisfactory
construct and
concurrent validity Concurrent validity is a type of evidence that can be gathered to defend the use of a test for predicting other outcomes. It is a parameter used in sociology, psychology, and other psychometric or behavioral sciences. Concurrent validity is demons ...
across a wide range of settings and samples. It is considered a good general screening measure for attention problems, although the
sensitivity and specificity
''Sensitivity'' and ''specificity'' mathematically describe the accuracy of a test which reports the presence or absence of a condition. Individuals for which the condition is satisfied are considered "positive" and those for which it is not are ...
are not both over .80 at any single cut score, so it should not be used by itself as the basis for a diagnosis of
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
There are three versions of the SDQ designed for use in different situations: a ''short form'', a ''longer form'' with an impact supplement, and a ''follow-up form'' designed for use after a behavioral intervention. The questionnaire takes 3–10 minutes to complete. There are now self-report (completed by the youth), parent-report, and teacher-report versions. A version designed for adults (age 18+ years) to fill out about themselves has also been developed. The SDQ has been translated into more than 80 languages, including
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
,
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
* Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
, and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
.
General population norms are available for the US and UK for some of the variations of the SDQ.
References
External links
*
Articles using the SDQ indexed in PubMed
{{Psychology
Screening and assessment tools in child and adolescent psychiatry