| dc.description.abstract | Children in the preschool years who suffer from emotional, psychological and behavioral difficulties can benefit from support and further assessment. Instruments that measure these difficulties in an accurate way can help to identify children at an early stage and may help prevent more severe and enduring psychiatric disorders. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used instrument to screen for internalizing and externalizing difficulties as well as prosocial behavior. However, it lacks validation in a Norwegian population of preschoolers. This study was aimed to explore the psychometric properties of the Norwegian version parent report of SDQ 2-4 (SDQ-P 2-4). The study was based on a community sample of 289 Norwegian children in the age span 1-5 years old. Internal reliability, construct validity and concurrent criteria validity was assessed against the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL). Gender differences were also assessed. The results showed satisfying internal reliability on the total difficulties scale, but worse for some of the subscales. SDQ showed good convergence and divergent validity in terms of correlations with CBCL. Gender differences was found on all scales where boys scored higher on all problem scales, and girls scored higher on the subscale prosocial behavior. The SDQ-P 2-4 discriminated outstandingly between children with and without high risk. The concurrent criteria validity was considered satisfying when the cut-off was lowered compared to the original British norms, to maximize the sensitivity and specificity. However, with the optimal cut-off the SDQ gave a considerate amount of false positives. The study concludes that the SDQ-P 2-4 can be a promising instrument to screen for emotional and behavioral difficulties among Norwegian preschoolers, particularly in high-risk samples. | |