Agreement of a child's respiratory symptom diary with parental reports and peak expiratory flow.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the agreement of a self-completed diary to monitor respiratory symptoms in children aged 6-12 years with parental symptom reports and fluctuations in lung function.


METHODS
We created a text- and symbol-based questionnaire for daily completion by children at school. Using a screening questionnaire completed by the parents, we selected 101 children with lower respiratory symptoms in the last year or doctor-diagnosed asthma to complete the diary. We assessed the agreement with a parent-completed daily symptom diary and measurements of peak expiratory flow (PEF) over 5 weeks, estimating % agreement and the kappa statistic (kappa) for pairwise comparisons.


RESULTS
Simple agreement between PEF variability, parent-reported and child-reported symptoms was moderate to high. Using kappa, agreement between children's and parents' reports of respiratory symptoms was only fair to moderate, and agreement with lung function measurements was poor for both parent- and child-reported symptoms.


CONCLUSIONS
Agreement between children's and parents' reports on day-to-day respiratory symptoms was fair to moderate. The children's symptom diary agreed poorly with lung function measurements, but was neither worse nor better than the parent-completed diary.
Hov
J R
JR
Medical Department, Akershus University Hospital, Lørenskog, Norway. j.e.r.hov@medisin.uio.no
Clench-Aas
J
J
Bartonova
A
A
Stavem
K
K
D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records; D015588:Observer Variation; D010290:Parents; D010366:Peak Expiratory Flow Rate; D012129:Respiratory Function Tests; D012135:Respiratory Sounds / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires