The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and standardized academic tests: Reliability across respondent type and age

Exploiting a nation-wide survey, we show that behavioral problems indicated by the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) are closely related to performance in standardized academic tests. The relationship is very linear across the entire distribution for both the total difficulties score and subscale scores of the SDQ. Assessing the similarity across respondent type, we find that teacher and parent reported scores have very similar slopes in the SDQ – test score relationship, while the child reported SDQ and the test performance has a flatter slope.