The extended version of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire as a guide to child psychiatric caseness and consequent burden

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief behavioural s creening questionnaire that asks about children's and teenagers' symptoms a nd positive attributes; the extended version also includes an impact supple ment that asks if the respondent thinks the young person has a problem, and if so, enquires further about chronicity, distress, social impairment, and burden for others. Closely similar versions are completed by parents, teac hers, and young people aged 11 or more. The validation study involved two g roups of 5-15-year-olds: a community sample (N = 467) and a psychiatric cli nic sample (N = 232). The two groups had markedly different distributions o n the measures of perceived difficulties, impact (distress plus social impa irment), and burden. Impact scores were better than symptom scores at discr iminating between the community and clinic samples; discrimination based on the single "Is there a problem?" item was almost as good. The SDQ burden r ating correlated well (r = .74) with a standardised interview rating of bur den. For clinicians and researchers with an interest in psychiatric casenes s and the determinants of service use, the impact supplement of the extende d SDQ appears to provide useful additional information without taking up mu ch more of respondents' time.