Over the past decades an increasing number of studies have focused on the importance of behavioural problems of school children. Often, the assessment of children’s behavioural and emotional problems has been carried out using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). This paper analyses the parents’ and teachers’ scores of SDQ for a sample of children aged 6 to 10 years who participated in a karate project in a public school. To handle the response options of the SDQ werelied on Item Response Theory (IRT) models. In particular, in this setting, we exploited the attractive features of the Linear Logistic Models with Relaxed Assumptions to measure the change in the SDQ dimensions parameter estimates which occurred over two measurement occasions: before and after the karate project. Notwithstanding the wide and ongoing use of the SDQ as brief behavioural screening there are no studies, to date, which have illustrated the usefulness of this class of IRTbased model for assessing change in the SDQ dimensions parameter estimates over time. This paper aims to fill this gap and discusses the main results of the application.
USING IRT MODELS TO QUANTIFY THE STRENGTHS AND DIFFICULTIES QUESTIONNAIRE (SDQ) OUTCOMES
DI ZIO, Simone;SARRA, Anna Lina;
2016-01-01
Abstract
Over the past decades an increasing number of studies have focused on the importance of behavioural problems of school children. Often, the assessment of children’s behavioural and emotional problems has been carried out using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). This paper analyses the parents’ and teachers’ scores of SDQ for a sample of children aged 6 to 10 years who participated in a karate project in a public school. To handle the response options of the SDQ werelied on Item Response Theory (IRT) models. In particular, in this setting, we exploited the attractive features of the Linear Logistic Models with Relaxed Assumptions to measure the change in the SDQ dimensions parameter estimates which occurred over two measurement occasions: before and after the karate project. Notwithstanding the wide and ongoing use of the SDQ as brief behavioural screening there are no studies, to date, which have illustrated the usefulness of this class of IRTbased model for assessing change in the SDQ dimensions parameter estimates over time. This paper aims to fill this gap and discusses the main results of the application.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
