Overall

Proportion of Preschool children with different levels of difficulties on the SDQ Total Difficulties scale and subscales (Base: 9056)

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The majority of children were experiencing no difficulties in their social, emotional or behavioural development (85%). On the sub-scales, the highest proportion of difficulties was in the Pro-social Behaviours scale, with the lowest being on the Emotional Symptoms scale.

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.