title: Psychometric properties of the Danish Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire: the SDQ assessed for more than 70,000 raters in four different cohorts.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief behavioural five factor instrument developed to assess emotional and behavioural problems in children and adolescents. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric properties for parent and teacher ratings in the Danish version of SDQ for different age groups of boys and girls.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Danish versions of the SDQ were distributed to a total of 71,840 parent and teacher raters of 5-, 7- and 10- to 12-year-old children included in four large scale Danish cohorts. The internal reliability was assessed and exploratory factor analyses were carried out to replicate the originally proposed five factor structure. Mean scores and percentiles were examined in order to differentiate between low, medium and high levels of emotional and behavioural difficulties.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The original five factor structure could be substantially confirmed. The Conduct items however did not solely load on the proposed Conduct scale and the Conduct scale was further contaminated by non-conduct items. Positively worded items tended to load on the Prosocial scale. This was more so the case for teachers than for parents. Parent and teacher means and percentiles were found to be lower compared to British figures but similar to or only slightly lower than those found in the other Nordic countries. The percentiles for girls were generally lower than for boys, markedly so for the teacher hyperactivity ratings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study supports the usefulness of the SDQ as a screening tool for boys and girls across age groups and raters in the general Danish population.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Janni.niclasen@psy.ku.dk
authors.forename: Janni
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Niclasen
authors.forename: Thomas William
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Teasdale
authors.forename: Anne-Marie Nybo
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.forename: Anne Mette
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Skovgaard
authors.forename: Hanne
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Elberling
authors.forename: Carsten
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Obel
mesh_terms: D001519:Behavior; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003718:Denmark; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D015588:Observer Variation; D010290:Parents; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012574:Schools; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires