Original article
A scale for the measurement of quality of life in adults with asthma

https://doi.org/10.1016/0895-4356(92)90095-5Get rights and content

Abstract

A 20-item self-administered questionnaire with Likert scale responses was developed to measure quality of life in adult subjects with asthma. A total scale score together with subscale scores for breathlessness, mood disturbance, social disruption and concerns for health were calculated by addition of item scores. Items for the scale were selected by principal components analysis of the responses of 283 subjects to a preliminary pool of 69 items. In 58 subjects with stable asthma, good short term test-retest reliability was demonstrated with the intraclass correlation coefficient for the total scale being 0.80. The questionnaire was internally consistent in a sample of outpatients (Cronbach's alpha 0.92 in 77 subjects) and in a community sample with asthma (Cronbach's alpha 0.94 in 87 subjects). Weak correlations in the expected direction were seen with three medical markers of asthma severity. This supports the construct validity of the questionnaire and emphasizes that quality of life represents a separate dimension of asthma.

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      Moreover, weak correlations with percent predicted FEV1 have also been reported for other asthma-specific quality of life measures [61,64]. HRQoL and clinical severity are two separate concepts that overlap in asthma, and poor correlations between the two have been previously observed [40,65,66]. Other studies have identified asthma control as a major contributor to impaired HRQoL, while severity markers did not show a significant impact [67].

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