Elsevier

Brain and Development

Volume 30, Issue 6, June 2008, Pages 410-415
Brain and Development

Original article
Scale properties of the Japanese version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): A study of infant and school children in community samples

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.braindev.2007.12.003Get rights and content

Abstract

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a short screening instrument which addresses the positive and negative behavioral attributes of infants, children and adolescents. The SDQ is widely used to evaluate child developmental disabilities, psychological and psychiatric conditions or disorders in Japan. However, we did not have normative data for the Japanese version until now. To establish the community-based data and properties for the Japanese version, we collected and evaluated parent ratings of a total of 2899 Japanese children aged 4–12 years, including 1463 boys and 1436 girls. Statistical evaluation of psychometric properties included a factor analysis verifying the proposed scale structure, an assessment of scale homogeneities, and the determination of age, gender and relationship of each difficulties scale, or prosocial scale. The total difficulties score in boys (8.70 ± 5.03) was higher than in girls (7.86 ± 4.88). Based on the distributions of SDQ scores observed in the Japanese community sample, recommended bandings identifying normal, borderline, and abnormal (clinical ranges) were defined for each scale, and some gender difference was found in some difficulties and prosocial SDQ scores. After evaluating parent ratings obtained in a community-based sample, the Japanese SDQ was shown to possess favorable psychometric properties. Thus, the Japanese translation of this popular and versatile instrument seems to be approximately as reliable and useful as the original English questionnaire.

Introduction

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief screening instrument used to assess positive and negative aspects of the behavior of children and adolescents which can be filled out by parents and teachers or as a self-report by children aged 11 years or older. First presented to the scientific public by Goodman [1], its roots can be traced back to an earlier report published [2]. SDQ is a short version of the Rutter parent questionnaire including extra items related to children’s strength. The clinical usefulness of SDQ has been confirmed in the field of child psychiatry [3] and child psychology [4]. Shortly after the publication of the original English SDQ, translations in several languages became available, and the worldwide application of the SDQ for screening, clinical, and research purposes has since been facilitated by the development of officially authorized translated versions in over 40 languages, all of which can be readily downloaded from the website (www.sdqinfo.com) for non-commercial purposes. The Japanese form was administered to parents of a sufficiently representative community-based sample in order to determine whether the proposed scale structure and psychometric properties were equivalent to those demonstrated for the English original and for the translated versions evaluated in other countries [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. Since the mean level and distribution of raw scale scores may differ from one country to another, and even accurately translated questionnaire items can yield slightly different results when administered in another language, it was also deemed appropriate to establish national norms for Japan, rather than applying the recommended score bandings and cut-offs previously defined for the English original.

In addition to establishing a normative database, the reported results address the impact of gender and age on parent-rated SDQ scores. After an evaluation of the structure and homogeneity of the Japanese scales, recommended score bandings are proposed in which normal, borderline, and abnormal or clinical ranges are defined for the total difficulties score and for each of the five SDQ subscales(Table 1).

Section snippets

Sample

We explained our study to five schoolmaster of elementary school and to all of the teachers at each grade level and requested their participation. We then sent 3015 questionnaires to the parents or caregiver. We collected 2924 replies, and the reply rate was 97.0%. Since all analyses were to be based on the same set of data, 25 questionnaires with one or more missing answers were excluded, leaving a final sample of 2899 subjects (1463 boys and 1436 girls) with valid answers on all 25 SDQ items.

Scale means and gender effects

Mean scores obtained for parent ratings in the entire sample are presented in Table 2, which also shows and compares the scale means for boys and girls. The total difficulties score for boys (8.70 ± 5.03) was significantly higher than that for girls (7.86 ± 4.88). In the five subscale including problems and prosocial subscale, the scores for conduct problems (2.05 ± 1.61), hyperactivity/inattention (3.55 ± 2.42), and peer problems (1.51 ± 1.55) in boys were significantly higher than those in girls, in

Discussion

Based on the distributions of SDQ scores observed in the Japanese community sample, recommended bandings identifying the normal, borderline, and clinical ranges were defined for each scale, and some gender difference was found in the total and some subscales of SDQ scores. After evaluating the parent ratings obtained in a community-based sample, the Japanese SDQ was shown to possess favorable psychometric properties. Thus, the Japanese translation of this popular and versatile instrument seems

Acknowledgement

This study was partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research C, from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology (MEXT) of Japan.

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