The French version of the Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ)and the Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ)

We report the results of the cross cultural adaptation and validation into the French language of two health status instruments. The Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ) is a disease specific instrument that measu res functional ability in daily living activities in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). The Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ) is a gene ric health related quality of life instrument designed to capture the physi cal and psychosocial well-being of children independently from the underlyi ng disease. Five hundred children were enrolled including 306 patients with JIA classified into systemic (23%), polyarticular (22%), extended oligoart icular (25%), and persistent oligoarticular (30%) subtypes, and 194 healthy children. Both instruments were reliable with intra-class correlation (ICC ) coefficients for the test-retest procedure of 0.91 for the CHAQ, and 0.87 and 0.89 for the physical and psychosocial summary scores of CHQ, respecti vely. Agreement between parents and children evaluated for the CHAQ was hig h with an ICC of 0.89 for the disability index; weighted kappa coefficients for the 8 domains ranged from 0.61 to 0.72. Convergent validity, was demon strated by significant correlations with the JIA core set of variables (phy sician and parent global assessment, scores for active joints and joints wi th limited range of motion, erythrocyte sedimentation rate)for both instrum ents. Both CHAQ and CHQ discriminated between healthy and JIA children, but only the disease specific CHAQ questionnaire discriminated clearly between the 4 JIA subtypes. In conclusion, the French versions of the CHAQ and the CHQ are reliable, and valid health assessment questionnaires to be used in children suffering from JIA.