Alysha Burns

Doctor Davidson

HDF 400

June 7th, 2020

Assessment #2 Reflection

The formal assessment tool I used this week with my child is called the strengths and

difficulties questionnaire. The SDQ can be completed by children as young as 11, to the age of

17. “The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief emotional and behavioral

screening questionnaire for children and young people. The tool can capture the perspective of

children and young people, their parents and teachers.” (CORC 1). Within this assessment tool, a

statement is given, then three options for an answer. Not true, somewhat true, or certainly true.

Then following the questionnaire is an impact portion of the assessment, which digs deeper into

the difficulties a child may have and how it affects their everyday life. Lastly, after the

statements and impact questions, I was able to manually score each portion of the assessment.

With this I found a scoring sheet rubric for the SDQ that was quite helpful to see the end results.

I chose this specific tool because this assessment fits perfectly within my child's age range and

focuses on hyperactivity, since she has ADHD, I thought that would be a great match. Also, this

tool focuses more on social-emotional development as well and since she is in middle school,

this time can be difficult for some children. Meaning finding a good group of friends, fitting in,

puberty, and doing well in school. My preparations of doing this assessment would be doing

some research on my own to find a specific tool that would work best for myself and the child I

am focusing on. After finding SDQ, I was able to print this out, and then Bekah and I were able
to facetime. We facetimed for about 15 minutes, as I asked questions and she was confident with

most of her answers.

As the assessment was complete, I decided to look over everything to make sure I did not

miss anything. After this I started the scoring process. Depending on the statement, each not

true, somewhat true, or certainly true answer that was given has a point system 0-2. At the end

of scoring each statement, through each category, the scoring system provides results after

adding the numbers up. The categories for scoring the SDQ include emotional, conduct,

hyperactive, peer, prosocial, and impact. This varies between categories, but the results can be

seen as “normal, borderline, or abnormal”.

Her results show emotional is scored a 6 (abnormal), conduct is scored a 3 (borderline),

hyperactivity reaches a 5 (normal), peer is at a 3 (borderline), prosocial is scored a 8 (normal),

impact is 3 (normal. After totaling up all the scores and looking at the score sheet, the total

difficulties score reaches a 28, which falls under the abnormal section.

Overall, I believe this assessment tool turned out great. This is quite insightful with each

of the categories and the specific scoring system. I did notice that her hyperactive score did result

in normal. Although this has ADHD, she has been medicated for three years now and it seems to

be working for her. One thing I would do differently would be not waiting to do this assessment

so late into the week. I can simply change that by not procrastinating.

References:

https://www.corc.uk.net/outcome-experience-measures/strengths-and-difficulties-

questionnaire/#:~:text=The%20Strengths%20and%20Difficulties%20Questionnaire,people%2C

%20their%20parents%20and%20teachers.