title: Comparison of parent and student responses to asthma surveys: students grades 3-12 and their parents from a suburban private school setting.
abstract: Schools are being called upon to help address asthma, a common problem in school-aged children. School-based asthma programs need information about asthma diagnoses, asthma symptoms, and asthma's impact on school attendance. Parent or student surveys are the most common method of collecting these data. However, medical literature offers little guidance to help schools determine whether parents or students are the most appropriate and effective source of asthma-related information. This study compares student and parent responses to the same set of asthma-related questions. In general, parents and students have a high level of agreement in reporting the absence of an asthma diagnosis or asthma symptoms. When parents and students disagreed, students reported many more asthmalike symptoms, especially symptoms with exercise and symptoms at night, than did their parents. The disparity in student and parent symptom reporting did not vary by age of the student. Students appear to provide the most sensitive measure of asthma-related problems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Research, Olmsted Medical Center, 210 Ninth St SE, Rochester, MN 55904, USA. yawnx002@umn.edu
authors.forename: Barbara P
authors.initials: BP
authors.lastname: Yawn
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wollan
authors.forename: Marge
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kurland
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bertram
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001249:Asthma / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002648:Child; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008910:Minnesota / Q000453:epidemiology; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013383:Suburban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires