VCAMS Proportion of young people with positive psychological development

Victorian Child and Adolescent Monitoring System - Proportion of young people with positive psychological development. This data is collected as part of the Victorian Student Health and Wellbeing Survey (VSHWS), also known as 'About you' by DET.

The SEHQ (School Entrant Health Questionnaire) is a parent report instrument that records parents’ concerns and observations about their child's health and wellbeing. It is also a tool for clinical practice and a point of engagement with parents and educators. The parents of all children beginning primary school in Victoria are asked to complete the SEHQ. Completion rates range from about 82% to 86% across the years presented.

Analysis of the SEHQ is complementary to existing information on children’s health and wellbeing such as the Burden of Disease findings. It creates one of the largest databases available in Australia capturing parent perceptions about the health and wellbeing of children in this particular age cohort.

The questionnaire is designed to assist School Nurses by providing detailed information on parental concerns about children’s health in areas including general health, speech, hearing, vision, development, behaviour, well-being and family stress. In addition, data from the SEHQ provides the Department of Education and Training with valuable information to advise government and service providers on how well our children are faring at the point of school entry.

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire that is incorporated in the SEHQ (from 2010 onwards). It includes questions on 25 psychological attributes which are divided between five scales: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems and prosocial behaviour (each scale has 5 items).

The total difficulties score is based on adding together the 5 items of the first four scales emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems (total of 20). http://www.sdqinfo.com/ To protect confidentiality figures totalling less than 5 are not made publicly available.

Local Government Area values may not add up to state totals due to rounding.

Further SEHQ information and resources are available at http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/research/pages/reportdatahealth.aspx

Data and Resources

Additional Information

Field Value
Published (Metadata Record) 22/09/2015
Last updated 18/01/2024
Organisation Department of Education
License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Category Education