SDQ | Youthinmind

Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire.

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:

25 items on psychological attributes
An impact supplement
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.

Download Paper-based SDQ

Uses of the SDQ.

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is an online assessment tool for 2-18 year olds. The SDQ has been used by over 4,000 research studies and administered over 5 million times. It exists in several versions to meet the needs of researchers, clinicians and educators.

Clinical Assessment

Many child and adolescent mental health clinics now use the SDQ as part of the initial assessment, getting parents, teachers and young people over the age of 11 to complete questionnaires prior to the first clinical assessment. The findings can then influence how the assessment is carried out and which professionals are involved in that assessment. For example, if a child has been referred with marked conduct problems, an assessment that focused too narrowly on these behaviors and related family issues might overlook associated hyperactivity. Advance knowledge that the child has been given high SDQ hyperactivity ratings by parents and teachers can help ensure that the assessment inquires in detail about hyperactivity; it may also be important to obtain a psychiatric or pediatric opinion early on in the assessment process with a view to establishing suitability for medication (Goodman, Renfrew, & Mullick, 2000).

Evaluating Outcome

"Before" and "after" SDQs can be used to audit everyday practice (e.g. in clinics or special schools) and to evaluate specific interventions (e.g. parenting groups). Studies using the SDQ along with research interviews and clinical ratings have shown that the SDQ is sensitive to treatment effects. Child and adolescent mental health services, and other specialist services for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties, can use an 'added value' score based on the SDQ as one index of how much help they are providing to the young people they see.

Epidemiology

The SDQ's emphasis on strengths as well as difficulties makes it particularly acceptable to community samples (Goodman & Scott, 1999). It has been widely used in large epidemiological studies. The SDQ is well adapted for studies of the general population since it is a dimensional measure across its full range, with each one-point increase corresponding to an increased rate of disorder (Goodman & Goodman, 2009). In addition, the same risk factors that predict change in total difficulty score across the entire range also predict it in children one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean (Collishaw, Meltzer, & Goodman, 2007). In Britain, mean SDQ scores can be used to generate prevalence estimates in sub-populations defined by a wide range of characteristics (e.g. ethnicity, family type, socioeconomic deprivation) (Goodman & Goodman, 2011). Note, however, that these prevalence estimators cannot be used to generate valid prevalence estimators cross-nationally (Goodman et. al., 2011).

Research

Screening

SDQpro.

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.