The SDQ is a brief psychological assessment tool for 2-18 year olds. It exists in several versions to meet the needs of researchers, clinicians, and educators. Each version includes between one and three of the following components:

1. 25 items on psychological attributes
2. An impact supplement
3. Follow-up questions

1) 25 items on psychological attributes. These 25 items are divided between 5 scales:

• The same 25 items are included in questionnaires for completion by the parents or teachers of 4-18 year olds (Goodman, 1997).

• A slightly modified informant-rated version for the parents or nursery teachers of 2 and 4 year olds. 22 items are identical, the item on reflectiveness is softened, and 2 items on antisocial behavior are replaced by items on oppositionality.

• Questionnaires for self-completion by adolescents ask about the same 25 traits, though the wording is slightly different (Goodman et. al., 1998). This self-report version is suitable for young people aged around 11-18, depending on their level of understanding and literacy.

2) An impact supplement

These extended versions of the SDQ ask whether the respondent thinks the young person has a problem, and if so, enquire further about chronicity, distress, social impairment, and burden to others.  This provides useful additional information for clinicians and researchers with an interest in psychiatric caseness and the determinants of service use (Goodman, 1999).

3) Follow-up questions

The follow-up versions of the SDQ include not only the 25 basic items and the impact question, but also two additional follow-up questions for use after an intervention. Has the intervention reduced problems? Has the intervention helped in other ways, e.g. making the problems more bearable? To increase the chance of detecting change, the follow-up versions of the SDQ ask about ‘the last month’, as opposed to ‘the last six months or this school year’, which is the reference period for the standard versions. Follow-up versions also omit the question about the chronicity of problems.

SDQpro is a web-based application to facilitate longitudinal mental health assessment of young people, including group(s) and individuals. It was released in January 2025 as a major upgrade to replace the old SDQcohort and SDQplus systems. The main features are:

• • Continuation of the persistent individual identification (PlusIID) for the person who is the subject of multiple assessments. Can be used along personal identifiers such as full name and ID. Two factor authentication, firewalls and data backups protects data and ensures GDPR/Data protection compliance.

• • Organisation of groups of PlusIIDs for assessment, including range of imports to streamline group and individual account creation. Multi-informant email automation available.

• • Use of online and paper-based SDQs for longitudinal assessment around the PlusIID. Near instantaneous results data, including reports, visualisations and exports, enabling comparison by informant and over time.

• • Self-entry of SDQ assessments on PCs, laptops, iPads and mobile phones. Invitations can be sent by email for the person, parents and teachers to complete. Arabic, Deutsch, English, Español, Français, Hrvatski, Português, Русский and Svenska are supported.

• • Flexible scaling to suit organisational needs; single user or multiple, three tier access for administrators and other professionals, data management and analysis for organisation, suborganisation, group and individual.

• • Potential for integration to allow organisations to integrate SDQpro into their systems (EHR, CMS, SMS).

• • Cost effective; only charge for SDQpro is the assessment you wish to conduct (an introductory rate of $2 per young person for the year), everything else is completely FREE, including ongoing support by our training and technical teams.

• • For a FREE demonstration of SDQpro please contact the Youthinmind training consultants (Janice & Jake) at sdqpro@youthinmind.com.