Overview
Me & My Feelings (M&MF), sometimes referred to as Me & My School, is a brief 16 item school-based measure of child mental health, covering two broad domains: emotional difficulties and behavioural difficulties.
Terms of use
To use this measure, please contact the developers at EBPU@annafreud.org. If you are planning to use this measure for the delivery and improvement of health and/or social care, a license to incorporate it into electronic systems can be obtained from NHS Digital. Please note that licenses obtained via this route may be restricted to particular territory (e.g. England, UK). If planning to use the measure outside of England, you may wish to contact NHS Digital to clarify the geographical scope of the licence.
Suitability
This measure is suitable to use with children as young as 8 years old.
Administration
This measure is brief and can be completed by children in under 10 minutes.
Working remotely with Me and My Feelings
Provided below is a fillable PDF version of Me and My Feelings. To open and complete the PDF electronically you need access to PDF reader software on your computer, smartphone or tablet. If you don’t have this, one option that is free to download is Adobe Acrobat Reader.
To find out more about working with outcome and experience measures remotely, please visit this page.
Scoring
The total score is calculated by adding all the 16 items in the scale, rating responses for this scale are scored as follows: Never = 0, Sometimes = 1, Always = 2. Item 15 (“I am calm”) is reverse scored, as follows: Never = 2, Sometimes = 1, Always = 0
The first 10 items comprise the Emotional Difficulties subscale. Items 11-16 comprise the Behavioural Difficulties subscale. To calculate the subscale scores, add the items belonging to each subscale, e.g. add items 1 to 10 to calculate the Emotional Difficulties subscale score. The total score for the Emotional Difficulties subscale is 20, and is 12 for the Behavioural Difficulties subscale, giving an overall Total score of 32.
Interpretation
Deighton et al. (2013) established cut-offs using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), as follows: for the Emotional Difficulties Subscale, scores of 10 and 11 indicate borderline difficulties, and scores of 12 and above indicate clinically significant difficulties; for the Behavioural Difficulties Subscale, scores of 6 indicate borderline difficulties, and scores of 7 and above indicate clinically significant difficulties
In the Wellbeing Measurement for Schools the cut-offs were established as follows: for the Emotional Difficulties Subscale, scores between 0 and 9 are considered expected, and scores equal or above 10 are considered elevated; for the Behavioural Difficulties Subscale, scores between 0 and 5 are considered expected, and Scores equal or above 6 are considered elevated.
For a summary of scoring instructions and categorisations (cut-offs), please access:
Psychometric properties
| Property | Definition |
M&MF |
| Internal consistency | Degree to which similar items that propose to measure the same general construct produce similar scores. |
Good internal consistency (Deighton et al., 2013) Good internal consistency (Patalay, Deighton, Fonagy, Vostanis, & Wolpert, 2014) |
| Construct validity | Degree to which a scale measures what it claims, or purports, to be measuring. | Assessed by considering convergent and discriminant validity (see below) and considering relationships between emotional and behavioural difficulties with theoretically related constructs of academic attainment, deprivation and SEN (Deighton et al., 2013) |
| Convergent validity | Correlation of the measure with others measuring the same concept. | Good convergent validity with the emotional and conduct subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (Deighton et al., 2013). |
| Discriminant validity | Lack of correlation with opposite concepts. | Good discriminant validity (Deighton et al., 2013). |
Translation
At the moment there are no translations of this measure.
References
Me and My School: Findings from the National Evaluation of Targeted Mental Health in Schools 2008-2011
Deighton, J., Tymms, P., Vostanis, P., Belsky, J., Fonagy, P., Brown, A., Martin, A., Patalay, P. & Wolpert, W. (2013). The Development of a School-Based Measure of Child Mental Health. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 31:247.
Patalay, P., Deighton, J., Fonagy, P., Vostanis, P., & Wolpert, M. (2014). Clinical validity of the Me and My School questionnaire: a self-report mental health measure for children and adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 8(17), https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-2000-8-17