The Asthma Responsibility Questionnaire: Patterns of family responsibilityfor asthma management

This study provided preliminary validation of the Asthma Responsibility Que stionnaire(ARQ), a brief measure that assesses the division of family respo nsibility for 10 asthma management tasks. Data were collected from 2 sample s of children (ages 7 to 15 years) and their mothers, recruited from an ast hma camp (Sample 1) and various community sources (Sample 2). The ARQ demon strated good internal consistency and convergent validity. Child and mother reports of child responsibility were modestly correlated and increased wit h child age by mother and child report. Four-year longitudinal data demonst rated significant increases in child responsibility for asthma management. Overall, children reported a higher degree of responsibility for themselves than mothers did for them.