Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire: Validation in children from Singapore

"Quality of Life" is a multidimensional measure encompassing the physical, emotional and social functioning of the child. The asthma specific question naire contains 23 questions (items) in three areas (domains) of activity. s ymptoms and emotions. The objective of the present study was to validate th e Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire "PAQLQ"(copyright 1991 Mc Master University). If the questionnaire is valid, a change in the child's asthma will be accompanied by a change in the "Quality of Life" questionnai re score. The questionnaire was administered twice over four weeks and the child's asthma status was assessed concurrently. Two groups were thus ident ified; Group A = unchanged asthma, Group B = changed asthma. Forty-seven ch ildren, aged 7 to 14 years, completed the study. Reliability of the questio nnaire shows an intraclass-correlation coefficient of only 0.71. Cross-sect ional construct validity was demonstrated by a significant correlation betw een the whole questionnaire and the clinical asthma score (p < 0.001) but n ot in the separate domains. Longitudinal construct validity was also demons trated by the significant correlation between change in the total questionn aire score, but not separate domains, with change in the child's asthma sco re (p < 0.05). Responsiveness was shown by a significant difference in the magnitude of the change in the questionnaire score between the two groups ( p < 0.001), but again not in the separate domains. It was concluded that th e questionnaire was validated as a whole but not in as convincing a manner, as has been done by others, and we are therefore in a position to advise c aution in its application in our population.