SDQ - primary 3 children

About the study

In Glasgow City, responses to the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQs) are currently being collected at 30 months (through Health Visitors), at age 4-5 in nurseries and in Primary 3 and Primary 6. This analysis reports on results from P3 SDQs in the academic years 2012/13 (data collected March/April of the academic year).

The SDQ is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire for children.It covers five areas: Conduct Problems, Hyperactivity/inattention, Peer Relationship Problems, Emotional Symptoms and Pro-social Behaviours. The first four of these are rated negatively (that is, they pick up difficulties in children). These can be added together to give a Total Difficulties score, which shows an indication of overall difficulties that the child is experiencing. The final area, Pro-social Behaviours, is a positively scored scale, so it shows things the child does e.g. ‘is helpful if someone is hurt or upset’. The Total Difficulties score and the sub-scale scores can be split into groups which indicate whether a child has no difficulties, possible difficulties or likely difficulties. It is these groups in relation to child characteristics which are explored below.

There were 4403 SDQs collected from P3 children in 2013.  These data relate to approximately 82% of children in P3 that year.   Children not covered include those who attend an independent school, those who attend an Additional Support for Learning School.

Just over half of children were male (50.7%) and 49.3% female. Just 1.3% of children in P3 were currently, or had previously, been known to be ‘Looked After’. Around a quarter of children (26.4%) lived in the most deprived quintile of area deprivation in Glasgow, with 16.7% living in the least deprived quintile.

The information and graphs presented on these pages has been kindly provided by the University of Glasgow, NHSGGC and Glasgow City Council Education services.