Abstract
The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a frequently used instrument developed for screening childhood mental health problems. The aim of this study is to clarify the structure of the Hungarian version of SDQ, to test previous measurement models, and to propose an alternative bifactor model. Data were collected from a community sample of 8–13-year-old children. We conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses on parent (n = 383) and teacher ratings (n = 391). The classic five-factor, an alternative three-factor, and a bifactor model were estimated. In the bifactor model, specific components refer to the five SDQ-traits, and the General Problems factor refers to an impression about the problem severity of the child. For both informants, the bifactor model yielded the best fit to the data compared to other models. Childhood behavioral problems can be best described as a multidimensional construct, which has implications regarding the screening procedure in various samples.
References
2008). Multicultural assessment of child and adolescent psychopathology with ASEBA and SDQ instruments: Research findings, applications, and future directions. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 49, 251–275. doi JCPP1867 [pii] 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01867.x
(2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th edition, text revision (DSM-IV-TR). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.
. (2006). Robust Chi square difference testing with mean and variance adjusted test statistics. Mplus Web Notes, 10. Retrieved from www.statmodel.com/download/webnotes/webnote10.pdf
(2004). Evaluation of the self-reported SDQ in a clinical setting: Do self-reports tell us more than ratings by adult informants? European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 13(Suppl. 2), II17–24. doi 10.1007/s00787-004-2004-4
(2009). Alpha, dimension-free, and model-based internal consistency reliability. Psychometrika, 74(1), 137–143. doi 10.1007/s11336-008-9100-1
(2004). The greatest lower bound to the reliability of a test and the hypothesis of unidimensionality. Psychometrika, 69, 613–625. doi 10.1007/bf02289858
(2006). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. New York: Guilford.
(1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In , Testing structural equation models (pp. 136–162). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
(2012). A tutorial on hierarchically structured constructs. Journal of Personality, 80, 796–846. doi 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00749.x
(1993). What is coefficient alpha? An examination of theory and applications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 98–104. doi citeulike-article-id:3800748
(2004). Revisiting the factor structure of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire: United States, 2001. Journal of the American Academic Child Adolescent Psychiatry, 43, 1159–1167. doi S0890-8567(09)61451-9 [pii], 10.1097/01.chi.0000132808.36708.a9
(2006). Nonnormal and categorical data in structural equation modeling. In , Structural equation modeling: A second course (pp. 269–314). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
(2009). The factor structure of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in Greek adolescents. Annals of General Psychiatry, 8, 20. doi 1744-859X-8-20 [pii]
(2007). Full-information item bifactor analysis of graded response data. Applied Psychological Measurement, 31(1), 4–19. doi 10.1177/0146621606289485
(1992). Full-information item bi-factor analysis. Psychometrika, 57, 423–436.
(2010). When to use broader internalizing and externalizing subscales instead of the hypothesized five subscales on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): Data from British parents, teachers and children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 1179–1191. doi 10.1007/s10802-010-9434-x
(1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581–586.
(2007). The psychometric properties of the self-reported SDQ – an analysis of Swedish data based on the Rasch model. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1289–1301. doi 10.1016/j.paid.2007.03.022
(1937). The bi-factor method. Psychometrika, 2, 41–54. doi 10.1007/bf02287965
(2007). A dimensional approach to developmental psychopathology. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 16(Suppl. 1), S16–23. doi 10.1002/mpr.217
(2006). Relationships between neuropsychological measures of executive function and behavioral measures of ADHD symptoms and comorbid behavior. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 21, 383–394. doi 10.1016/j.acn.2006.05.003
(2004). Development of ’hot’ executive function: The children’s gambling task. Brain and Cognition, 55(1), 148–157. doi 10.1016/s0278-2626(03)00275-6
(2001). Self-reported strengths and difficulties in a community sample of Finnish adolescents. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 10, 180–185.
(2001). The higher-order structure of common DSM mental disorders: Internalization, externalization, and their connections to personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 1245–1259. doi 10.1016/s0191-8869(00)00106-9
(2010). The structure of childhood disruptive behaviors. Psychological Assessment, 22, 816–826. doi 2010-24850-003 [pii] 10.1037/a0020975
(2010). What is to be the fate of ADHD subtypes? An introduction to the special section on research on the ADHD subtypes and implications for the DSM-V. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 39, 723–725. doi 10.1080/15374416.2010.517171
(2004). Two replicable suppressor situations in personality research. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39, 303–328.
(in press ). The rebirth of bifactor measurement models. Multivariate Behavioral Research.2010). Bifactor models and rotations: Exploring the extent to which multidimensional data yield univocal scale scores. Journal of Personality Assessment, 92, 544–559. doi 10.1080/00223891.2010.496477
(2007). The role of the bifactor model in resolving dimensionality issues in health outcomes measures. Quality of Life Research, 16(Suppl. 1), 19–31. doi 10.1007/s11136-007-9183-7
(2008). Test of alternative hypotheses explaining the comorbidity between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Conduct Disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 36(1), 29–40.
(2010). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Early evidence of its reliability and validity in a community sample of Italian children. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 570–575. doi 10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.005
(2004). The Strengths and Difficulties Self-Report Questionnaire as a screening instrument in Norwegian community samples. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 13, 73–82. doi 10.1007/s00787-004-0356-4
(2008). Psychometric properties of the Parent Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in the general population of German children and adolescents: Results of the BELLA study. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 17(Suppl. 1), 99–105. doi 10.1007/s00787-008-1011-2
(2007). The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire: Scale validation with Russian adolescents. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 63, 861–869. doi 10.1002/jclp.20401
(2007). Subscores based on classical test theory: To report or not to report. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 26(4), 21–28. doi 10.1111/j.1745-3992.2007.00105.x
(2008). Psychosocial work characteristics and anxiety and depressive disorders in midlife: The effects of prior psychological distress. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 65, 634–642. doi 10.1136/oem.2007.036640
(2012). Rewards of bridging the divide between measurement and clinical theory: Demonstration of a bifactor model for the Brief Symptom Inventory. Psychological Assessment, 24(1), 101–113. doi 10.1037/a0024712
(2010). Diagnostic instability of DSM-IV ADHD subtypes: Effects of informant source, instrumentation, and methods for combining symptom reports. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 39, 749–760. doi 10.1080/15374416.2010.517172
(2008). Construct validity of the five-factor Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in pre, early, and late adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 49, 1304–1312. doi JCPP1942 [pii] 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01942.x
(2008). Screening efficiency of the Child Behavior Checklist and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A systematic review. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 13, 140–147. doi 10.1111/j.1475-3588.2007.00461.x
(1999). On the relationship between the higher-order factor model and the hierarchical factor model. Psychometrika, 64, 113–128. doi 10.1007/bf02294531
(