Article2008

Construct validity of the five‐factor Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in pre‐, early, and late adolescence

Betty Van Roy · Marijke Veenstra · Jocelyne Clench‐Aas

344 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

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Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Psychometric Methodologies and Testing Mental Health Research Topics

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is designed to measure psychological adjustment in children and adolescents. Psychometric evaluations of the instrument have shown satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity, while factor analysis studies have shown mixed results across countries. In the present study, the construct validity of the five-factor SDQ is evaluated in a large community sample of Norwegian pre-, early, and late adolescents. METHODS: The sample consisted of 26,269 children and adolescents (10-19 years) with valid answers on all 25 items of the SDQ self-report. Complete parent/proxy data of respective pre-adolescent children was available for 6,645 cases. A Lisrel approach to Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the five-factor model and the presence of a positive construal factor. In the sample of pre-adolescents and their parents/proxies, convergent and discriminant validity was evaluated by a CFA approach to multitrait-multimethods (MTMM). RESULTS: Fit statistics for the hypothesized five-factor model were satisfactory, but introducing correlated error terms for some of the items led to significant model improvement in all age groups. All factor loadings were higher than .30, except for item 11 (good friend). The loadings differed across age groups and differed markedly between the parent/proxy and self-report measures. The MTMM showed that the source of ratings made a difference on the validity of all subscale ratings, with self-reports discriminating more on ratings of emotional and peer problems, and parents/proxies discriminating more on hyperactivity symptoms. A positive construal factor was identified but had a modest effect compared with the original five traits. Results suggested an unclear construct and meaning of the Prosocial behaviour subscale. CONCLUSION: The results of the present study indicated support for the proposed five-factor structure of the SDQ (Goodman, 2001) across a wide age range (10-19years), including older adolescents and different informants. However, some improvements should be considered to improve internal reliability and conceptual clarity.

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References

1989Structural Equations with Latent Variables 1997The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A Research Note 2003Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV)1991Manual for The Child Behavior Checklist/4-18 and 1991 Profile 2001Psychometric Properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire 1998The strengths and difficulties questionnaire: A pilot study on the validity of the self-report version 1999Comparing the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Checklist: Is Small Beautiful?2003The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

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