Cross‐cultural equivalence of parental ratings of child difficulties during the pandemic: Findings from a six‐site study

Abstract

Objectives:The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been shown to be invariant across informants, developmental stage and settings, but tests of crosscultural equivalence are limited to adolescents' self-reports. The COVID-19 pandemic makes this gap particularly pertinent, given the need to understand whether distinct government approaches (e.g., school closures) are uniquely associated with variability in children's psychosocial outcomes and the reliance on parents' ratings for young children.Methods: Within a Confirmatory Factor Analysis framework, we tested the crosscultural measurement invariance of the SDQ across six countries: Australia, China, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and USA, using a sample of 1761 parents of 3-to 8-year-olds (M = 5.76, SD = 1.09). Results: A five-factors model showed good fit to the data and partial cross-cultural scalar invariance. In this sample, Swedish parents reported the fewest peer problems (Cohen's d = 0.950) and the highest prosocial scores (Cohen's d = 0.547), whilst British parents reported the greatest child emotional (Cohen's d = 0.412) and hyperactivity problems (Cohen's d = 0.535). Conclusions: The present results indicate that the parent-version of the SDQ is appropriate for use and comparison across different contexts during the pandemic. K E Y W O R D S child psychopathology, COVID-19 pandemic, cross-cultural, measurement invariance 1 | INTRODUCTION Globally, COVID-19 is the worst public health crisis in living memory (UNFPA, 2020); the resulting government restrictions profoundly impacted children's social life (Banerjee & Rai, 2020) and are likely to lead to long-term negative consequences. For example, school closures have dramatically curtailed learning and social interaction opportunities for an estimated 1.5 billion children across 188 countries (Lee, 2020). Yet young children's experiences have been relatively neglected, as studies of the pandemic's socio-emotional impact have Sarah Foley and Luca Ronchi should be considered joint first author.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The impact of COVID‐19 on the well‐being of Victorian children born with cleft lip and/or palate

“…Despite previous research suggesting the COVID‐19 pandemic has generally negatively influenced children's well‐being, 18,19,27 reports for neurodiverse children indicate that this may not be the case for all population groups. A systematic review reporting the influence of the pandemic on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) revealed conflicting results 39 .…”

“…Given the time pressure and need for a rapid response to the developing COVID‐19 situation, it was not possible to recruit a control cohort of typically developing children. Consequently, this study has accessed data published from an Australia‐wide cohort of otherwise healthy children during the COVID‐19 pandemic by way of comparison 27 . As a result, differences may exist between the study and comparison cohort arising from variations in geographical location, time frames and restriction levels across Australia.…”

“…Data from a similar cross‐sectional cohort study of typically developing Australian children were used as a comparison cohort 27 . Data for this study were collected slightly earlier in the COVID‐19 pandemic experience between April and July 2020, with 109 participants Australia wide.…”

Exploring Parenting Styles Patterns and Children’s Socio-Emotional Skills

“…Specifically, we chose the threefactor model, which makes a broader distinction between prosocial, internalizing, and externalizing behaviors and indicated the best-fitting model in a sample of parents with 4-to 17-years old children in the US [99]. Recent results [100] reveal that the parent-version of the SDQ was a suitable tool for use and comparison across different contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”