Gender

Proportion of Preschool children with ‘Likely difficulties’ on the SDQ Total Difficulties scale and sub-scales by Sex of child (Base: 9056)

SDQ tot presch gender


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Preschool SDQ results suggest that more boys had difficulties than girls on all scales except for Emotional Symptoms, which was low for both. In particular, at this age, boys were more than three times more likely to have likely difficulties on the Hyperactivity/inattention scale, two and a half times more likely to have Conduct Problems and around three times as likely to lack Pro-social behaviours.

Notes

SDQ - Goodman’ Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (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.