Does the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire – self report yield invariant measurements across different nations? Data from the International Child Mental Health Study Group

Stevanović, Dejan; Urbán, Róbert; Atilola, Olayinka; Vostanis, Panos; Balhara, Yatan Pal Singh; Avicenna, Mohamad; Kandemır, Hasan; Knez, Rajna; Franić, Tomislav; Petrov, Petar

doi:10.1017/s2045796014000201

Cited by 60 publications

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“…Given that no previous psychometric evaluation of the SDQ has taken place in South Africa, the current study therefore aimed to: (i) examine the means, standard deviation, distribution and internal consistency of the SDQ-S in a representative sample of adolescent boys and girls; (ii) compare gender differences in the above psychometric properties; (iii) determine the proportion of boys and girls who scored in the 'normal', 'borderline' and 'abnormal range' of SDQ-S subscales based on UK norms, and, if required, to generate South African cut-off scores; (iv) compare mean SDQ-S scores of the South African sample to previously reported normative data for SDQ-S scores in UK, Australian and Chinese samples; and (v) determine whether the South African SDQ-S data would fit the five-factor structure of the original UK SDQ-S. We hypothesised that significant differences on the basis of gender will exist in SDQ-S scores as found in previous studies (Becker et al 2015;Kremer et al 2015), hypothesised that South African cut-off scores may be required, as reported in other studies from LMICs (Kashala et al 2005;Menon et al 2007;Bakare et al 2010;Cortina et al 2013), and that there would be only partial support for the five-factor structure, as reported elsewhere (Rønning et al 2004;Richter et al 2011;Stevanovic et al 2014). We did not hypothesise any specific patterns of similarities or differences between the South African, UK, Australian and Chinese data, but were keen to explore the crosscountry potential of the instrument.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Measuring adolescent mental health around the globe: psychometric properties of the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in South Africa, and comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data

Vries

Davids

Mathews

et al. 2017

Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci

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Aims. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire Self-Report (SDQ-S) in South African adolescents, and compared findings with data from the UK, Australia and China.Methods. A sample of 3451 South African adolescents in grade 8, the first year of secondary school (M age = 13.7 years), completed the SDQ-S in Afrikaans, English or isiXhosa. Means, group differences and internal consistency were analysed using SPSS V22, and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted using MPlus V7.Results. In the South African sample, significant gender differences were found for four of the five sub-scale means and for total difficulties, but gender differences of alpha scores were negligible. The internal consistency for the total difficulties, prosocial behaviour and emotional symptoms sub-scales were fair. UK cut-off values for caseness (set to identify the top 10% of scores in a UK sample) led to a higher proportion of South African adolescents classified in the 'abnormal' range on emotional and peer difficulties and a lower proportion classified in the 'abnormal' range for hyperactivity. South African cut-offs were therefore generated. The cross-country comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data showed that South African adolescent boys and girls had the highest mean scores on total difficulties as well as on the subscales of emotional symptoms and conduct problems. In contrast, South African boys and girls had the lowest mean scores for hyperactivity/inattention. The UK boys and girls had the highest mean scores for hyperactivity/inattention, while the Australian sample had the highest scores for prosocial behaviours. The Chinese boys had the highest peer problem mean scores and Chinese boys and girls had the lowest means on prosocial behaviours. Confirmatory factor analyses showed significant item loadings with loadings higher than 0.40 for the emotional and prosocial behaviour sub-scales on the five-factor model, but not for all relevant items on the other three domains.Conclusions. Findings support the potential usefulness of the SDQ-S in a South African setting, but suggest that the SDQ-S should not be used with UK cut-off values, and indicate the need for further validation and standardisation work in South African adolescents. We recommend that in-country cut-offs for 'caseness' should be used for clinical purposes in South Africa, that cross-country comparisons should be made with caution, and that further examination of naturalistic clusters and factors of the SDQ should be performed in culturally and contextually diverse settings.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Measuring adolescent mental health around the globe: psychometric properties of the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in South Africa, and comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data

Vries

Davids

Mathews

et al. 2017

Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci

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“…Nonetheless, the review of the literature shows that there are few studies of measurement invariance in the self-reported version of the SDQ [19,11,27,26,38,39].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Essau et al [38], with a sample of 2418 adolescents, found that the factorial structure of the SDQ differed across five European countries (Cyprus, England, Sweden, Germany, and Italy). Another important study, conducted by Stevanovic et al [39], did not find an acceptable model in countries from Europe, Asia, and Africa (India, Nigeria, Turkey, Croatia, Indonesia, Bulgaria, and Serbia). As so, they were not able to test for MI across countries.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Previous studies have analyzed the MI of the SDQ, self-reported version in adolescents, across different variables (e.g., gender, age, race/ethnicity, and income) [19,11,26,[38][39][40]. As yet, there has been no in-depth examination addressing the question of whether the dimensional structure underlying the SDQ scores is invariant across countries.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As yet, there has been no in-depth examination addressing the question of whether the dimensional structure underlying the SDQ scores is invariant across countries. To the best of our knowledge, few studies have addressed this question [39,38,27]. For instance, Essau et al [38], with a sample of 2418 adolescents, found that the factorial structure of the SDQ differed across five European countries (Cyprus, England, Sweden, Germany, and Italy).…”

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confidence: 99%

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New evidence of factor structure and measurement invariance of the SDQ across five European nations

Ortuño‐Sierra

Fonseca‐Pedrero

Solana

et al. 2015

Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry

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International audienceThe main purpose of the present study was to analyse the internal structure and to test the measurement invariance of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), self-reported version, in five European countries. The sample consisted of 3012 adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years (M = 14.20; SD = 0.83). The five-factor model (with correlated errors added), and the five-factor model (with correlated errors added) with the reverse-worded items allowed to cross-load on the Prosocial subscale, displayed adequate goodness of-fit indices. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis showed that the five-factor model (with correlated errors added) had partial strong measurement invariance by countries. A total of 11 of the 25 items were non-invariant across samples. The level of internal consistency of the Total difficulties score was 0.84, ranging between 0.69 and 0.78 for the SDQ subscales. The findings indicate that the SDQ's subscales need to be modified in various ways for screening emotional and behavioural problems in the five European countries that were analysed

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Measurement invariance of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) across six countries

Stevanović¹,

Costanzo

Fucà

et al. 2021

Autism Research

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The Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) is a simple and inexpensive tool for Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessments, with evidenced psychometric data from different countries. However, it is still unclear whether ASD symptoms are measured the same way across different societies and world regions with this tool, since data on its cross-cultural validity are lacking. This study evaluated the crosscultural measurement invariance of the CARS among children with ASD from six countries, for whom data were aggregated from previous studies in India (n = 101), Jamaica (n = 139), Mexico (n = 72), Spain (n = 99), Turkey (n = 150), and the United States of America (n = 186). We analyzed the approximate measurement invariance based on Bayesian structural equation modeling. The model did not fit the data and its measurement invariance did not hold, with all items found non-invariant across the countries. Items related to social communication and interaction (i.e., relating to people, imitation, emotional response, and verbal and nonverbal communication) displayed lower levels of cross-country noninvariance compared to items about stereotyped behaviors/sensory sensitivity (i.e., body and object use, adaptation to change, or taste, smell, and touch response). This study found that the CARS may not provide cross-culturally valid ASD assessments. Thus, cross-cultural comparisons with the CARS should consider first which items operate differently across samples of interest, since its cross-cultural measurement non-invariance could be a source of cross-cultural variability in ASD presentations. Additional studies are needed before drawing valid recommendations in relation to the cultural sensitivity of particular items.

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Does the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire – self report yield invariant measurements across different nations? Data from the International Child Mental Health Study Group

Cited by 60 publications

References 50 publications

Measuring adolescent mental health around the globe: psychometric properties of the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in South Africa, and comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data

Measuring adolescent mental health around the globe: psychometric properties of the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in South Africa, and comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data

New evidence of factor structure and measurement invariance of the SDQ across five European nations

Measurement invariance of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) across six countries

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