The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief questionnaire for 4-17 year olds developed by Goodman et al in the United Kingdom. The SDQ has 25 items divided between 5 scales: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems and prosocial behaviour. Read a brief overview of the SDQ.

The SDQ measures are copyright protected with copyright held by Robert Goodman of the UK-based Youthinmind organisation (https://youthinmind.com/). Specific conditions are attached to use of the SDQ measures, detailed at https://sdqinfo.org/. These include the requirement that no modifications are made to the content in any way. Paper versions may be downloaded and copied without charge subject to adherence to this condition.

While the paper forms may be downloaded and completed/scored manually, Youthinmind offers a commercial automated scoring service that requires users to register and pay on a per-use basis. Strict conditions are imposed to prevent users from creating or distributing electronic versions of the SDQ measures without specific agreement by Youthinmind.

The Australian Government Department of Health has entered into a licence agreement with Youthinmind to make available Australian versions of the SDQ that have been mandated for Australian Specialised and Primary Mental Health Care settings. These versions contain extra questions than the standard versions provided by Youthinmind. It is these versions are used for the PMHC MDS. They can be downloaded from the links below:

• P4-10 (PC101)
• P4-10 (PC201) FOLLOW-UP
• P11-17 (PY101)
• P11-17 (PY201) FOLLOW-UP
• S11-17 (YR101)
• S11-17 (YR201) FOLLOW-UP

Scoring the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire provides an explanation of how the SDQ is scored.