A parent-completed respiratory questionnaire for 1-year-old children: repeatability.

ABSTRACT:

Background and aims

There are few standardised questionnaires for the assessment of respiratory symptoms in preschool children. We have developed and tested the short-term repeatability of a postal questionnaire on respiratory symptoms for 1-year-old children.

Methods

A newly developed postal questionnaire for the assessment of wheeze and other respiratory symptoms was sent to parents of a population-based random sample of 4300 children aged 12-24 months. After an interval of 3 months, a random sample of 800 respondents received the questionnaire a second time. The responses were compared using Cohen's kappa (kappa) to assess agreement corrected for chance.

Results

The first questionnaire was returned by 3194 (74%) families, the second one by 460/800 (58%). Repeatability was excellent (kappa 0.80-0.96) for questions on household characteristics, environmental exposures and family history, good (kappa 0.61-0.80) for questions on prevalence, severity and treatment of wheeze, and moderate (kappa 0.39-0.66) for chronic cough and upper respiratory symptoms.

Conclusions

This short postal questionnaire designed for use in population-based studies has excellent repeatability for family and household characteristics and good repeatability for questions on wheeze. Short-term changes in symptom status might be responsible for variable answers on recent chronic cough and upper respiratory symptoms. Overall, the questionnaire is a valuable instrument for community-based research on respiratory symptoms in 1 to 2-year-old children.

SUBMITTER: Strippoli MP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2083231 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature