Factor Structure of the Self-Report Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire in a Diverse U.S. Sample
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Factor Structure of the Self-Report Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire in a Diverse U.S. Sample Emily Graybill 1 & Andrew Roach 2 & Brian Barger 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used mental health screening instrument developed in the United Kingdom that measures five proposed factors. U.S. research, however, historically supports a slightly different three-factor solution. The present study reports results using both principal factor analysis (PFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on data from multiple waves of an ongoing mental health project in middle school aged children. PFA analyses suggested three, five and six-factor solutions with substantial cross-loadings from items. CFAs showed alternative five and six-factor solutions fit well when items guided by the initial PFA were allowed to cross-load. Neither the original five-factor nor popular three-factor models fit well without allowing cross-loading items. These data suggest that popular SDQ three and five-factor model may have variable fit in certain U.S. populations. Keywords Strengths and difficulties questionnaire . Externalizing . Internalizing . Child mental health . Mental health screening
Introduction There is a growing demand for quality mental health screeners to identify externalizing and internalizing problems in children and adolescents. To meet this demand, a variety of proprietary measures have been developed (Collett et al. 2003; Paalman et al. 2013); the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQ) has emerged as one of the leading measures in the field (Goodman 1997; Caci et al. 2015). The SDQ comes in self-report, caretaker, and teacher report versions and has scales measuring Peer Problems, Conduct Problems,
Emotion Problems, Hyperactivity, and Prosocial behaviors. The Conduct Problems and Hyperactivity scales may be combined to measure externalizing concerns and the Peer Problems and Emotion Problems scales may be combined to measure internalizing concerns. Multiple reports have investigated the psychometric properties of the SDQ with many indicating adequate to good psychometric properties (Niclasen, Teasdale, Andersen, Skovgaard, Elberling, & Obel, C., 2012; Stone et al. 2010), but others indicating poorer properties (Du et al. 2008; Toh et al. 2008).
Factor Analytic Studies of SDQ Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-020-09833-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Brian Barger [email protected] Emily Graybill [email protected] Andrew Roach [email protected] 1
School of Public Health, Center for Leadership in Disability, Georgia State University, 75 Piedmont Avenue, Ste 514, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA
2
Counseling and Psychological Services, Georgia State University, 75 Piedmont Avenue, Ste 514, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA
The SDQ was created in the UK (Goodman 1997) and a number of factor analytic studies have bee
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