Factor Structure of the Urdu Version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in Pakistani Adolescents

Cecilia Essau, Farah Qadir, Aneela Maqsood, Najam us-Sahar, Nadia Bukhtawer, Bilge Uzun Ozer, Regina Pauli-Jones, Catherine Gilvarry

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Abstract

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used brief screening measure for general difficulties and positive attributesin children and adolescents. The main aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and factor structure of the Urdu translated version of the SDQ (SDQ-U) among Pakistani adolescents. A total of 1277 adolescents (708 boys and 569 girls), aged 13-17 years, participated in the study. The adolescents were recruited from 13 schools in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. In addition to the SDQ, the adolescents completed the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS). The internal consistency of the SDQ-U total difficulties was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.70. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the three-compared to the five-factor model provided a better fit. The SDQ-U total scores correlated significantly with the SCAS total scores and with all itssubscales. The SDQ-U proved to be a reliable and valid measure of emotional and behavioural problems in the Pakistani context.

© 2017 Essau CA, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Original languageEnglish
Article number6
Pages (from-to)1
Number of pages6
JournalACTA PSYCHOPATHOLOGICA
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Mar 2017

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