MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL - RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY EVIDENCE FOR THE SELF-DESCRIPTION QUESTIONNAIRE-II WITH GIFTED STUDENTS

The use of the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ), in its various fo rm, is recommended for use with gifted students, yet little psychometr ic data exist with respect to the use of these subscales with this pop ulation. The SDQ-II was administered to adolescents attending a summer residential program for academically gifted students (N = 459). Estim ates of internal consistency for scores on the 11 subscales are large enough to warrant group interpretation and research uses (mean alpha = .89) and possibly individual uses for older gifted students. Confirma tory factor analysis provides limited evidence of construct validity u sing data from this sample of gifted students. The relatively poor fit of the tested models may be due to the extreme negative skewness of i tem score distributions.