Somatic Complaint List

Available in Dutch, English, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Albanian. Farsi will follow soon; 11 items

The Somatic Complaint List was developed with the aim of identifying how often children and adolescents experience and feel pain. Dutch and English versions were previously constructed in parallel (Rieffe et al., 2004; 2006). The process involved using responses given by teachers to the question of what are children’s most common health complaints. It also contains items comparable to those present in a more extensive measure, the Children’s Somatisation Index (CSI; Walker & Greene, 1989). Consisting of 11 items, the SCL asks participants to rate on a 3-point scale (1 = never, 2 = sometimes, 3 = often) the frequency with which they experience certain bodily complaints, such as a stomach-ache. Two of the items are positively formulated and are thus reversely scored. This questionnaire has demonstrated good reliability (alpha > .75) in both the U.K and Dutch samples.

Rieffe C, Meerum Terwogt M, Bosch JD (2002). Emotie-identificatie en rapportage lichamelijke klachten bij kinderen. Kind en Adolescent, 23, 3, 154-169.

Jellesma, F.C., Rieffe, C., & Meerum Terwogt, M. (2007). The Somatic Complaint List: Validation of a self-report questionnaire assessing somatic complaints in children. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 63, 399-401.

For validation of the questionnaire in Spanish:

Rieffe, C., Villanueva, L., Adrián, J.E. & Górriz, A.B. (2009). Somatic complaints, mood states and emotional awareness in adolescents. Psicothema, 21, 459-464.

For validation of the questionnaire in Farsi:

Rieffe, C., Oosterveld, P., Meerum Terwogt, M., Novin, S., Nasiri, H., & Latifian, M. (2010). Relationship between alexithymia, mood and internalizing symptoms in children and young adolescents: Evidence from an Iranian sample. Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 425-430.

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Here you can download different versions of the Somatic Complaint List
Dutch Version:  
English Version:
Greek Version:    
Italian Version:  
Spanish Version:
Albanian Version:

Syntax for recoding:

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