Scale Validation of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in Iranian Children

"n Objective: "n To study the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). "nMethod: The data for this study was collected from the psychiatric clinic of Hafez hospital and 16 regular schools in four regions of Shiraz using stratified random sampling .The 25 items of the SDQ were completed for 379 boys and 377 girls. The 756 participants aged 3-18 were divided to 3 groups according to age classification.The SDQ was completed by parents, teachers and adolescents according to their age. Clinical interview was performed for 155 children and adolescents who referred to the psychiatric clinic. "nResults: The mean age of the children was 10.3 years (SD=3.6, range 3-18 years). Children were divided to 3 groups: 1) among the participants 17 (2.3%) were aged 3-4 years,; 2) 409 (54%) were aged 4-11 years, and 3) 330 (43.7%) were aged 11-16 years. Good internal consistencies were found for the self report SDQ scales (mean for subscales 0.628). For the teacher SDQ scales, the internal consistencies were lower than the self-report scales (mean for subscales 0.454). The lowest internal consistencies were found for the parents SDQ scales. There was sufficient convergent and discriminant validity. "nConclusions: The Persian translation of the self reported SDQ has acceptable psychometric properties. Internal consistency of the self-report SDQ was good.The mean inter-informant correlations of the SDQ scales were satisfactory.