OUP accepted manuscript

The majority of studies on mental health in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children report a higher level of mental health problems. Inconsistencies in reports of prevalence of mental health problems have been found to be related to a number of factors such as language skills, cognitive ability, heterogeneous samples as well as validity problems caused by using written measures designed for typically hearing children. This study evaluates the psychometric properties of the self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in Norwegian Sign Language (NSL; SDQ-NSL) and in written Norwegian (SDQ-NOR). Forty-nine DHH children completed the SDQ-NSL as well as the SDQ-NOR in randomized order and their parents completed the parent version of the SDQ-NOR and a questionnaire on hearing and language-related information. Internal consistency was examined using Dillon–Goldstein’s rho, test–retest reliability using intraclass correlations, construct validity by confirmato...