title: Reliability of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire among Finnish 4-9-year-old children.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Early recognition of children's mental health problems calls for structured methods in front line services. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a commonly used short questionnaire in screening child's mental difficulties.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To test the reliability and descriptive properties of the SDQ in a community sample of Finnish 4-9-year-old children (n = 4178).
  
  
  METHODS
  Both parents, two teachers in day-care or a teacher at school completed the SDQ. To control for possible bias, public health nurses rated their concern about every child's mental health, including non-participants.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The internal consistencies of the SDQ total score in all informants' reports were satisfactory to good. Agreement (Spearman rho) in total scores between parents was 0.65, between parent and teacher 0.43 and between two teachers in day-care 0.81. The stability in parent's reports over 12 weeks was good. The distributions of the informant-rated scores indicated significant and clinically important gender differences, and the 80th and 90th percentiles were generally below the international cut-off points. Public health nurses reported emotional or behavioural difficulties more commonly in non-participants (12%) than in participants (7%; p < 0.001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results supported earlier findings of good internal consistency, inter-rater and cross-informant agreements and test-retest of the method. However, the gender and age of the child, the number of informants and cultural differences in reporting styles affected the results and thus confirmed the need to re-evaluate the SDQ in the culture and population in question.
authors.affiliation: University of Tampere, School of Medicine, Department of Child Psychiatry, Finland.
authors.forename: Anne-Mari
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Borg
authors.forename: Pälvi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kaukonen
authors.forename: Raili
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Salmelin
authors.forename: Matti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Joukamaa
authors.forename: Tuula
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tamminen
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires