title: The spanish version of the paediatric asthma quality of life questionnaire (PAQLQ): metric characteristics and equivalence with the original version.
abstract: The Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PAQLQ), developed by Juniper et al., assesses the impact of asthma on children's daily life. It contains 23 items, covering three dimensions: symptoms, activities limitation and emotional function.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To develop an equivalent Spanish version of the PAQLQ, and to assess its measurement characteristics.
  
  
  METHODS
  The forward and back-translation method was used for the adaptation. A longitudinal study (assessments at the 1st and 5th weeks), with patients from the emergency and outpatient departments of three Spanish hospitals, was designed to test the properties of the new adapted version. At each visit, a trained interviewer administered the PAQLQ, a Global Index of Change and a General Health Perception scale. The Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR) was also recorded daily, together with symptoms, during the prior week.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Ninety-nine patients (66.7% males, 42.4% suffering an exacerbation, mean age of 11.3 years) with the following types of asthma were evaluated: mild intermittent (31.3%), mild persistent (36.4%), moderate persistent (29.3%) and severe persistent (3%). At the 1st visit, the mean pre-bronchodilator %PEFR was 87.3%. The Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.86 to 0.95. As expected, correlations between the PAQLQ scores, and the Asthma Control Score (0.53-0.67), the General Health Perception (0.34-0.55), and the %PEFR (0.44-0.55) were moderate. The PAQLQ scores remained unchanged in stable patients while increased significantly in those showing improvements.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  After a standard cross-cultural adaptation process, the Spanish version of the PAQLQ has shown to be equivalent to the original, with similar internal consistency reliability, validity and sensitivity to clinical changes.
authors.affiliation: Paediatric Department, Hospital de Sant Joan de Deu, Martorell & ABS Martorell, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tauler
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vilagut
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Grau
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: González
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sánchez
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Figueras
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Vall
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ferrer
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Alonso
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001249:Asthma / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D014175:Translating