TY - JOUR
T1 - Longitudinal invariance of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire across ages 4 to 16 in the ALSPAC sample
AU - Speyer, Lydia Gabriela
AU - Auyeung, Bonnie
AU - Murray, Aja Louise
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The U.K. Medical Research Council and Wellcome (grant no: 217065/Z/19/Z) and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. This publication is the work of the authors and L.G.S., B.A., and A.L.M. will serve as guarantors for the contents of this paper. A comprehensive list of grants funding (PDF, 459KB) is available on the ALSPAC website. B.A. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (grant no. 813546), the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund TRUST/VC/AC/SG/469207686, and the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ES/W001519/1) during the course of this work. LGS and ALM have no funding to declare for this project. The study sponsors had no part in the design, data analysis, and interpretation of this study, in the writing of the manuscript or in the decision to submit the paper for publication, and the authors’ work was independent of their funders.
PY - 2022/10/18
Y1 - 2022/10/18
N2 - The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been widely used to study children’s psychosocial development longitudinally; however, such analyses assume longitudinal measurement invariance, that is, they presuppose that symptom manifestations are measured comparably across different ages. Violations of this assumption could bias longitudinal analyses and should therefore be empirically tested. This study tested longitudinal measurement invariance within a confirmatory factor analysis framework in the U.K.-based Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 13,988). Results indicated that SDQ scores showed configural, metric, scalar, and residual invariance across ages 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 16, supporting its use for comparing variances, covariances, and means over time within a latent variable model as well as using observed scores. At age 4, configural invariance was not supported, indicating that mental health symptoms as measured by the SDQ manifest differently at this age, thus necessitating caution when comparing symptoms as measured by SDQ scores at this age to later ages.
AB - The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been widely used to study children’s psychosocial development longitudinally; however, such analyses assume longitudinal measurement invariance, that is, they presuppose that symptom manifestations are measured comparably across different ages. Violations of this assumption could bias longitudinal analyses and should therefore be empirically tested. This study tested longitudinal measurement invariance within a confirmatory factor analysis framework in the U.K.-based Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 13,988). Results indicated that SDQ scores showed configural, metric, scalar, and residual invariance across ages 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 16, supporting its use for comparing variances, covariances, and means over time within a latent variable model as well as using observed scores. At age 4, configural invariance was not supported, indicating that mental health symptoms as measured by the SDQ manifest differently at this age, thus necessitating caution when comparing symptoms as measured by SDQ scores at this age to later ages.
KW - ALSPAC
KW - confirmatory factor analysis
KW - longitudinal measurement invariance
KW - Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
U2 - 10.1177/10731911221128948
DO - 10.1177/10731911221128948
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85140207111
SN - 1073-1911
JO - Assessment
JF - Assessment
ER -