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Age-specific norms and validation of the German SDQ parent version based on a nationally representative sample (KiGGS)

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Abstract

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is the most widely used mental health screening instrument for children and adolescents. It is a short questionnaire including 25 items that can be answered by parents, teachers or children. There are two studies which report norms for the German SDQ parent version. They do not include children younger than 6 years. Moreover, whether the German SDQ parent version is measurement invariant across age has not yet been investigated. The absence of measurement invariance across age would support the use of age-specific norms that are not yet available for the German SDQ parent version. We used data of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS), a nationally representative survey including 14,835 children aged 3–17 years, to assess measurement invariance of the German SDQ parent version across the full age range. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the hyperactivity and emotional symptoms subscales are not comparable between children of different ages. This supports the use of age-specific norms for these two subscales and for the total SDQ. We used methods of centile estimation to smoothly model the centiles of the SDQ total score and the subscale scores in dependence on age. These age-specific centiles reflect the developmental course of SDQ problems in children (including preschoolers) and adolescents living in Germany. They can be used to identify children and adolescents with abnormal behaviour, while accounting for the developmental course of emotional and behaviour problems.

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Notes

  1. The original SDQ differs from this early-year version in the wording of three items (two items of the behaviour problem subscale and one item of the hyperactivity subscale; see http://www.sdqinfo.org).

  2. Kline [26], for example, suggests a minimum of 100 subjects per group.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Angelika Schaffrath Rosario for helpful comments on centile curves and Carol Wallis for language corrections.

Funding

Funding was provided by Bundesministerium für Gesundheit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Health Monitoring, Robert Koch Institute, General-Pape-Straße 62-64, 12101, Berlin, Germany

    Silke Janitza, Kathrin Klipker & Heike Hölling

  2. Vivantes Clinic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Landsberger Allee 49, 10249, Berlin, Germany

    Kathrin Klipker

Authors
  1. Silke Janitza
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  2. Kathrin Klipker
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  3. Heike Hölling
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Correspondence to Silke Janitza.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

787_2019_1337_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary material 1 (PDF 313 kb) Online Resource 1 Results of confirmatory factor analysis showing the SDQ five-factor model based on the total study population as well as stratified by sex

787_2019_1337_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplementary material 2 (PDF 759 kb) Online Resource 2 Results of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis showing unstandardized and standardized factor loadings and thresholds for each age-group of the partial strong invariance model (for boys and girls)

787_2019_1337_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Supplementary material 3 (PDF 173 kb) Online Resource 3 Norm values for the five SDQ-P subscales (non age-specific) and age-specific norm values for the subscales on conduct problems, peer problems and prosocial behaviour

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Janitza, S., Klipker, K. & Hölling, H. Age-specific norms and validation of the German SDQ parent version based on a nationally representative sample (KiGGS). Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 29, 123–136 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01337-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01337-1

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