%0 Journal Article %A Patalay, P %A Hayes, D %A Wolpert, M %D 2018 %F discovery:10049098 %J BJPsych Open %N 2 %P 55-57 %T Assessing the readability of the self-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire %U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10049098/ %V 4 %X The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is one of the most widely used measures in child and adolescent mental health in clinical practice, community-based screening and research. Assessing the readability of such questionnaires is important as young people may not comprehend items above their reading ability when self-reporting. Analyses of readability in the present study indicate that the self-report SDQ might not be suitable for young people with a reading age below 13–14 years and highlight differences in readability between subscales. The findings suggest a need for caution in using the SDQ as a self-report measure for children below the age of 13, and highlight considerations of readability in measure development, selection and interpretation. %Z Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2018. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.