Swedish norms for the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for children 3–5 years rated by parents and preschool teachers

Abstract

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widespread tool for assessing behavior problems in children and adolescents. Despite being investigated thoroughly concerning both validity and reliability, peer reviewed studies that provide norms, especially for preschool children, are lacking. This paper provides Swedish norms using data from a large community sample of children aged 3–5, based on mothers’, fathers’, and preschool teacher’s ratings. Preschool teachers’ ratings were generally lower than parents’ ratings, which contradicts some previous studies. Differences between girls and boys were found, suggesting that boys display higher levels of behavior problems. Lower parental education and country of origin outside of Sweden were also associated with more difficulties. Cut‐offs are presented for each age group, gender and rater category. Population‐specific norms and percentile cut‐offs provided in this study facilitate identifying children in need of interventions in paediatric care and enable cross‐country comparisons of children’s mental health problems.

Asthma and allergies correlate with mental health problems in preschool children

“…To investigate the current study aim, population data from the Focus study were used. (16,17)…”

“…Sex‐ and age‐specific Swedish cut‐offs were applied to establish whether or not the children had mental health problems. (17) Only the exposure variables that were significantly associated with the outcomes, as shown by the single models, were tested in multiple models.…”

“…Previous findings from the Focus study have shown that the teachers reported significantly lower levels of mental health problems in the children compared with the parents, even if correlations between parent and teacher ratings showed good interrater agreement. (16,20) Additionally, the Focus study has provided norms for the SDQ, based on parents, and preschool teachers, (17) and shown that the CHC nurses found the SDQ useful for their clinical evaluation of the children. (21) Further findings based on Focus data have demonstrated that the combination of somatic and mental health problems predicted higher service use in the children.…”

Facilitating implementation of an evidence-based method to assess the mental health of 3–5-year-old children at Child Health Clinics: A mixed-methods process evaluation

“…Results from the facilitation program might not be applicable to lower SES populations served by health units. Participating parents in the trial had higher education level, were more likely to have been born in Sweden and more likely to be cohabiting than the population average (p < 0.001 for all) [32]. In fact, at the CHCs with more disadvantaged populations, implementation was more difficult despite extra support, and only one of three low SES centres achieved the 50% level for population coverage.…”

Gender-Specific Associations of Pregnancy-Related Anxiety with Placental Epigenetic Patterning of Glucocorticoid Response Genes and Preschooler’s Emotional Symptoms and Hyperactivity

“…In our study, we used the emotional symptoms and hyperactivity subscales of the SDQ. The preschooler whose subscale score is above or equal to the 80th percentile (indicating borderline and abnormal) will be identi ed as having problems on this subscale [32]. The internal consistency, test retest reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity proved to be acceptable [33].…”