A parent-completed respiratory questionnaire for 1-year-old children: repeatability.
OBJECTIVE
There are few standardised questionnaires for the assessment of respiratory symptoms in preschool children. We have developed and tested the short-term repeatability of a postal questionnaire on respiratory symptoms for 1-year-old children.


METHODS
A newly developed postal questionnaire for the assessment of wheeze and other respiratory symptoms was sent to parents of a population-based random sample of 4300 children aged 12-24 months. After an interval of 3 months, a random sample of 800 respondents received the questionnaire a second time. The responses were compared using Cohen's kappa (kappa) to assess agreement corrected for chance.


RESULTS
The first questionnaire was returned by 3194 (74%) families, the second one by 460/800 (58%). Repeatability was excellent (kappa 0.80-0.96) for questions on household characteristics, environmental exposures and family history, good (kappa 0.61-0.80) for questions on prevalence, severity and treatment of wheeze, and moderate (kappa 0.39-0.66) for chronic cough and upper respiratory symptoms.


CONCLUSIONS
This short postal questionnaire designed for use in population-based studies has excellent repeatability for family and household characteristics and good repeatability for questions on wheeze. Short-term changes in symptom status might be responsible for variable answers on recent chronic cough and upper respiratory symptoms. Overall, the questionnaire is a valuable instrument for community-based research on respiratory symptoms in 1 to 2-year-old children.
Strippoli
Marie-Pierre F
MP
Swiss Paediatric Respiratory Research Group, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Silverman
Michael
M
Michel
Gisela
G
Kuehni
Claudia E
CE
D001249:Asthma / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D015995:Prevalence; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards*; D012120:Respiration Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*