Original articles

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

Marie-Pierre F Strippoli¹, Michael Silverman², Gisela Michel¹, Claudia E Kuehni¹

¹ Swiss Paediatric Respiratory Research Group, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
² The Leicester Children’s Asthma Centre, Division of Child Health, Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Dr Claudia E Kuehni, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Finkenhubelweg 11, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; kuehni{at}ispm.unibe.ch

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 () 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 ( 0.80–0.96) for questions on household characteristics, environmental exposures and family history, good ( 0.61–0.80) for questions on prevalence, severity and treatment of wheeze, and moderate ( 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.

Keywords: preschool; asthma; kappa; repeatability; questionnaire

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