Broader child and adolescent assessment
Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire — Child Self-Report
Symptom measurement requiring clinical interpretation
Reference information · Questionnaire
- Last content update
- 2026-10-26
- Clinical review
- Not independently reviewed
- Source jurisdiction
- See individual sources
- Coverage
- Questionnaire
| Field | Instrument context |
|---|---|
| Version | Original English child 13-item short form, Angold and Costello (1987) |
| Population | Children and adolescents; child self-report |
| Respondent | Self-report with clinician interpretation |
| Recall period | Past two weeks |
| Purpose | Symptom measurement requiring clinical interpretation |
Assessment tool
A total does not establish individual item responses.
This form is about how you might have been feeling or acting recently. For each question, please check how you have been feeling or acting in the past two weeks. If a sentence was not true about you, check NOT TRUE. If a sentence was only sometimes true, check SOMETIMES. If a sentence was true about you most of the time, check TRUE.
Copyright Adrian Angold & Elizabeth J. Costello, 1987; Developmental Epidemiology Program; Duke University.
Responses stay in this page’s memory. Reset or leave the page to clear them. No patient identifiers are collected.
Interpretation & limitations
- Sum range 0–26; higher scores indicate more endorsed depressive symptoms.
- The developer states there are no prescribed cut points for any MFQ version. No universal severity or diagnostic cutoff is assigned.
- All items are required; omitted or inapplicable responses are not zero.
- No automatic diagnosis, medication change or declaration of safety.
References · 2
- Selected full original form and scoring
- Developer permission and cutoff guidance · Duke permits administration to clients and research participants free of charge, requesting attribution. Preserve the original wording and attribution.