Reliability and Validity of SDQ in Nigerian Population

University
*** Semester
Individual Differences
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i
Abstract
The spot light of this research is mental health of children, where SDQ’s current reliability and
validity is researched, based on the Nigerian population. This research uses SDQ (Strengths and
Difficulties Questionnaire), which refers to an evaluation related screening questionnaire that
draws the emotional and behavioural screening, on child mental health. The disorders in children
and adolescents is a growing public health concern. SDQ can be used by children and youngsters
easily, as it helps in capturing their perspectives. Thus, this report is regarding mental health of
children and SDQ is the most widely used method. With the help of SDQ, I will be investigating
the current reliability and validity of scale through Nigerian population. Moreover, as SDQ
facilitates with data measures that are translated in various languages, I have opted this method.
My statistical technique, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is represented. Totally, 7019
participants from Nigeria have participated, whose age ranges between 4 to 17 years. My internal
consistency analysis is represented. Hence, the research ensures to highlight the main findings.
Subsequently, it is concluded that the reliability and validity of the sample is quite good.
Keywords: Adolescence; Child mental health; EFA; Nigeria; SDQ
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Aim..................................................................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Objective............................................................................................................................................................. 2
2. Literature Review.................................................................................................................................................... 2
3. Methods.................................................................................................................................................................. 3
3.1 Data.................................................................................................................................................................... 3
3.2 Measures............................................................................................................................................................. 3
3.3 Statistical Analysis.............................................................................................................................................. 4
4. Results..................................................................................................................................................................... 5
5. Discussion................................................................................................................................................................ 7
5.1 Limitation........................................................................................................................................................... 8
5.2 Recommendation................................................................................................................................................ 8
References........................................................................................................................................................................ 9
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1
1. Introduction
This research is related to mental health of children, where SDQ’s current reliability and
validity is researched, based on the Nigerian population. This research ensures to find the
importance of, mental health of children. This research utilizes SDQ (Strengths and Difficulties
Questionnaire). This research is important because, it is important to identify the psychopathy in
children and adolescents early, by assessing their behaviour, as this will help to provide medical
help. Moreover, the mental health issues in the children and the adolescents can turn out to be a
major burden and on the other hand, it can even have the child’s family, school and community.
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire refers to an evaluation related screening questionnaire
that draws the emotional and behavioural screening, on child mental health. The disorders in
children and adolescents is a growing public health concern and SDQ can be utilized by children
and youngsters easily to capturing their perspectives. Thus, this report is regarding mental health
of children and SDQ is the most widely used method ("Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire",
2017). With the help of SDQ, I will be investigating the current reliability and validity of scale
through Nigerian population. Moreover, as SDQ facilitates with data measures that are translated
in various languages, so I have opted this method to discard the cultural differences and help
with the translation issues. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is used in this study, to
analyze the data. As, EFA helps to decrease the data to an extremely smaller set of summary
variables and also helps in exploring the phenomena’s underlying theoretical structure. It is also
used to for identifying the relationship structure among the variable and respondent
("Exploratory Factor Analysis", 2018).
In the world, there in increasing number of children and adolescents, who are identified
to suffer from various mental health issues, which will have greater impact of the lives of the
children and this need to be addressed soon, where the parents and teachers must be made aware
of such children’s emotional functioning. Because, this increases these children’s strength and
eases them to handle their difficulties ("Children and young people", 2018). However, such
children needs immediate help (Tracy, 2016). From the research of Du, Kou & Coghill, in China,
it is observed that SDQ is quite reliable and valid to be used on populations outside of Britain
(Du, Kou & Coghill, 2008). But still, there are a lot of questions which clearly direct that,
whether SDQ has got reliability and validity in various samples or not.
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