Outcome Measures for IECMHC
States, tribes, and communities are building the evidence that IECMHC works in early care and education. A common question is which tools to use to measure impact.
Use this Choose and Use tool to plan how you'll measure IECMHC outcomes. It summarizes 22 measures used in two or more IECMHC program evaluations, covering impact on children, teachers, teacher-child relationships, and classrooms or programs.
Full record
Child · Screening ToolStrengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (Child)
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- Level
- Child Level
- Type of Tool
- Screening Tool
- Construct
- Challenging behaviors; Child's social-emotional competence
- Respondent
- Teacher; Parent
- Language(s)
- English; Afrikaans; Arabic; Chinese; Dutch; Farsi; Hindi; Italian; Japanese; Korean; Punjabi; Russian; Spanish; Thai; Urdu; Other
- Length
- 5-10 minutes; 25 items (plus 31 items for impact supplement, 32 items for follow-up)
- Description
- A brief mental health screening questionnaire. The optional impact supplement quantifies functional impairment and the follow-up version assesses change over time. This measure can be used to screen an individual child or to gauge the prevalence and impact of behavioral challenges in a classroom.
- Subscales
- Total difficulties score, prosocial behavior, peer problems, emotional problems, hyperactivity, and conduct problems. In addition, there is an Impact score if the SDQ impact supplement is used
- Published Psychometrics?
- Yes See for example: Goodman, R., & Scott, S. (1999). Comparing the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Checklist: is small beautiful?. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 27(1), 17-24.
- Citation for Tool
- Goodman, R. (1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: a research note. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 38(5), 581-586.
- In the Public Domain?
- Yes - Available through sdqinfo.org
- Norms
- No norms
Disclaimers
Don't limit your data collection to these measures. They are outcome measures: they show how IECMHC affects children, classrooms, and programs. Also collect implementation data (how IECMHC is delivered) and process data (the near-term changes that lead to those outcomes).
Many families who use IECMHC face wide racial and ethnic disparities in access to opportunity. Programs and systems leaders should always collect demographic data, and always break down outcome, process, and implementation data by race/ethnicity, income, language, and disability status.
Make evaluation decisions in light of your program's theory of change, setting, and the people you serve. Where you can, choose measures normed on the populations you serve and available in a language families understand.
In addition to using the Choose and Use Guide, we recommend you also contact the CoE to request technical assistance to refine your decisions about which tools to select.
Need help choosing?
Request technical assistance from the Center of Excellence to help you decide which tools to use.