SDQ in the Hands of Fathers and Preschool Teachers : Psychometric Properties in a Non-clinical Sample of 3-5-Year-Olds

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a well-established instrument for measuring social and behavioural problems among children, with good psychometric properties for older children, but less validity reports on pre-schoolers. In addition, there is a knowledge gap concerning fathers as informants. The present work is one of the few validity studies to include preschool teachers and the first on preschool children where fathers are included as separate informants. In this study, SDQs were collected from a large community sample (n = 17,752) of children aged 3–5, rated by mothers, fathers, and preschool teachers and analysed using confirmatory factor analysis. Our results revealed acceptable fit for all informant groups and measurement invariance across child gender, child age, and parental education level. Our findings suggest good construct validity of the SDQ for a non-clinical preschool population and imply that it may be used for assessing child behaviour problems from different informant perspectives.