Can a parental questionnaire about children’s reading ability identify dyslexia in school children?

Abstract: In today's society, great demands are placed on people’s reading and writing ability. Studies have shown that children with dyslexia are at greater risk of developing depression and anxiety than other children. Therefore, a time and costeffective screening instrument is needed to identify dyslexia at an early age. The present study aims to further investigate and evaluate whether dyslexia can be identified in school children through the parental questionnaire Short Dyslexia Scale (SDS). The study includes a dyslexia group and a control group where the parents filled out the questionnaire. Scores from a standardized word decoding test and listening comprehension test were also collected. The study’s results show that SDS can be used to identify dyslexia in school children as it showed significant differences between the groups and no overlap in individual results. There was a large difference in performance between the groups on testing and their test results were in good agreement with the parents’ SDS ratings.