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* From the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Prof. Juniper, Ms. Ferrie, and Mr. King), McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; Oregon Health Sciences University (Dr. Buist), Portland, OR; and Glaxo Wellcome Inc (Dr. Cox), Research Triangle Park, NC. Supported by a grant from Glaxo Wellcome Inc.
Correspondence to: Elizabeth Juniper, MSc, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University Medical Centre, 1200 Main St West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8N 3Z5, Canada; e-mail: juniper{at}fhs.mcmaster.ca
| Abstract |
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Methods: For the standardized version of the AQLQ, the AQLQ(S), we formulated five generic activities (strenuous exercise, moderate exercise, work-related activities, social activities, and sleep) to replace the five patient-specific activities in the AQLQ. In a 9-week observational study, we compared the AQLQ with the AQLQ(S) and examined their measurement properties. Forty symptomatic adult asthma patients completed the AQLQ(S), the AQLQ, the Medical Outcomes Survey Short Form 36, the Asthma Control Questionnaire, and spirometry at baseline, 1, 5, and 9 weeks.
Results: Activity domain scores (mean ± SD) were lower with the AQLQ (5.7 ± 0.9) than with the AQLQ(S) (5.9 ± 0.8; p = 0.0003) and correlation between the two was moderate (r = 0.77). However, for overall scores, there was minimal difference (AQLQ, 5.4 ± 0.8; AQLQ(S), 5.5 ± 0.8; r = 0.99). Reliability (AQLQ intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.95; AQLQ(S) intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.96) and responsiveness (AQLQ, p < 0.0001; AQLQ(S), p < 0.0001) were similar for the two instruments. Construct validity (correlation with other measures of health status and clinical asthma) was also similar for the two instruments.
Conclusions: The AQLQ(S) has strong measurement properties and is valid for measuring health-related quality of life in asthma. The choice of instrument should depend on the task at hand.
Key Words: asthma health-related quality of life questionnaire
| Introduction |
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We have developed a standardized version of the AQLQ, the AQLQ(S), in which five generic activities replace the five patient-specific activities of the AQLQ. In this validation study, we have compared scores generated by the AQLQ and AQLQ(S) and have examined the measurement properties that are important for the confident use of the AQLQ(S) in clinical trials, clinical practice, and cross-sectional surveys.
| Materials and Methods |
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Study Design: In this 9-week observational study, patients were assessed at baseline and after 1, 5, and 9 weeks. At each clinic visit, spirometry was measured and the following questionnaires were completed: the self-administered version of the AQLQ plus the five new generic activity questions, the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ),11 and the Medical Outcomes Survey Short Form 36 (SF-36).12 For 1 week before each follow-up clinic visit, patients completed a daily diary.
Patients whose asthma was adequately controlled continued taking their established asthma medications throughout the study. Asthma was considered adequately controlled when none of the following were present: awoken at night by symptoms, persistent waking in the morning with symptoms, limitation of normal daily activities, sputum, inhaled short-acting ß2-agonist > 2 puffs daily, or FEV1 after bronchodilator < 70% predicted. Patients whose asthma was not adequately controlled at week 1 or week 5 were advised to increase their dosage of medication in the manner recommended by their asthma consultant. For those without a treatment plan, we recommended an inhaled steroid, beclomethasone dipropionate, up to 800 µg daily.
Outcome Measures With AQLQ Plus Five Generic Activities: The AQLQ1 has 32 questions, the first 5 of which are the patient-specific activities. At the first clinic visit, each patient selects the five activities in which he or she has been most troubled by asthma during the previous 2 weeks. These activities are retained throughout the study. For this study, we used the self-administered version of the AQLQ, and the five generic activity questions were added to the end of the questionnaire. Patients respond to each question on a seven-point scale and recall their experiences during the previous 2 weeks. Results are expressed as four domain scores (symptoms, 12 questions; activities, 11 questions; emotional function, 5 questions; and environmental exposure, 4 questions) and as an overall score (32 questions).
Outcome Measures With ACQ: Ninety-two asthma clinicians from around the world identified the symptoms that are most important in determining clinical asthma control. The ACQ contains the five top-scoring symptoms, a question about ß2-agonist use, and another about the FEV1 percent predicted (total of seven questions). The ACQ has been validated and shows strong measurement properties.11
Outcome Measures With Daily Diary: Each morning patients recorded the best prebronchodilator PEF of three blows and the amount of short-acting ß2-agonist used in the previous 24 h.
Outcome Measures With SF-36: This 36-item generic health status questionnaire provides summary scores for physical and mental health. In patients with asthma, it has good internal consistency and cross-sectional validity.12
Statistical Analysis
First, we examined concordance between the AQLQ(S) and the AQLQ
(criterion validity). Using data from the first clinic visit, we
evaluated differences between AQLQ and AQLQ(S) with a paired
t test and examined the closeness of association with a
Pearson correlation coefficient.
Second, we compared the measurement properties of the two instruments.
These included the following: (1) reliability, the ability
of the instrument to give reproducible results when the clinical state
is stable and to discriminate between patients with different levels of
impairment; (2) responsiveness, the ability of the
instrument to detect changes in clinical status even if that change is
small; (3) cross-sectional validity, observed differences
between patients truly reflect differences in asthma-specific quality
of life (demonstrated by showing that correlations between both the
AQLQ and the AQLQ(S) and other measures of asthma and generic health
status are close to expected); and (4) longitudinal
validity, observed changes in score with time truly represent
changes in asthma-specific quality of life (demonstrated by showing
that changes in AQLQ and AQLQ(S) scores correlate in a predictable
manner with changes in other measures of health status).13
This analysis required that we categorize patients according to whether
their asthma remained stable between consecutive visits (weeks 1 to 5
and weeks 5 to 9) or whether it changed.14
Categorization
was performed using data from the ACQ in which a change in score
0.5 on the seven-point scale can be considered clinically
important.11
Patients whose conditions either improved or
deteriorated by a score
0.5 were placed in the changed group. All
other patients were placed in the stable group.
Reliability of the instruments was determined from patients in the stable group. If a patient was in stable condition between both weeks 1 and 5 and between weeks 5 and 9, a single observation was selected blindly using a random number generator. Reliability has been estimated as the within-subject SD and related to the total SD as an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). This statistic not only provides evidence of the instrument's ability to give reproducible results but also its ability to discriminate between patients with different levels of impairment (1 = perfect reliability, 0 = no reliability).13
Responsiveness was determined in three ways. First, for patients in the
changed group, we determined whether the instruments could detect these
changes using a paired t test. Second, we determined whether
the instruments could detect differences between the stable and changed
groups using an unpaired t test. For both estimations, data
from those whose conditions deteriorated and those whose conditions
improved were combined by changing the sign of those whose conditions
deteriorated after it had been shown that improvements and
deteriorations in the patients in this study were symmetric. Third, we
calculated the responsiveness index for each questionnaire. This index
provides evidence of the degree of responsiveness of the instrument and
is calculated by dividing change scores by the pooled SD of
change.15
The difference in responsiveness indices was
tested using a paired t test. Some patients contributed two
observations to a group. To ensure that this did not result in an
overestimate of the precision of responsiveness, we inflated
(multiplied) the variance to take into account within-subject
correlations by the quantity 1 + (n - 1)
, where
is the
ICC of the change scores and n = 2 (the number of observations per
subject).16
| Results |
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Measurement Properties
Reliability: Thirty-five patients remained in stable
condition between two consecutive clinic visits and thus contributed to
the reliability analysis. The within-subject SDs and ICCs for overall
scores and individual domains are shown in Table 4
. In summary, the reliability of the AQLQ and the AQLQ(S) was very
similar both for overall score and for the activity limitation domain.
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| Discussion |
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The concordance analysis showed that the mean score for the activity domain of the AQLQ(S) was significantly higher (ie, less limitation) than for the activity domain of the AQLQ and that the correlation between the two activity domains was only 0.77. This lack of concordance is not surprising because patients select the activities that are most troublesome for the AQLQ and these activities may not all be captured by the generic activities in the AQLQ(S). In addition, one or more of the generic activities may be totally irrelevant to an individual patient (eg, a patient who never does any strenuous exercise). Although it is important to be aware of these differences between the two instruments, the mean difference for the overall score between the AQLQ and the AQLQ(S) was 0.1 and for the activity domain it was 0.2, both of which are considerably less than the minimal important difference of 0.52 and probably not of clinical importance. The second part of the analysis provided evidence that the measurement properties of the AQLQ(S) and the AQLQ (reliability, responsiveness, and both cross-sectional and longitudinal validity) are very similar and add further support for the validity of the AQLQ(S).
The correlations between both the AQLQ and the AQLQ(S) and other measures of clinical asthma status are very similar to those observed in a large number of other studies.2 3 4 5 6 7 11 16 They emphasize that within an individual patient, the problems and impairments that the patient experiences as a result of asthma cannot be inferred from the clinical measures of airway function; they have to be measured directly.
A limitation of this study is the relatively small sample size. However, other validation studies of the AQLQ would suggest that the sample size is quite adequate.2 3 4 In addition, patients may have been homogeneous. Although we tried to ensure that patients represented a wide range of asthma severity, age, and sex, the study was conducted in southern Ontario where the majority of patients are Caucasians. Testing of the AQLQ(S) in other settings will increase our confidence in the ability to generalize these results.
When selecting an instrument, it is important to review which properties are most important for the task at hand. There is no doubt that the patient-specific activities in the original AQLQ allow assessment of the problems that are important to the individual patient, and therefore this instrument can be considered to have better content validity than the AQLQ(S). This may be important if the instrument is being used in clinical practice to identify individual patient problems and the effect of interventions on these problems. It has also been suggested that patient-specific questions help to overcome cultural, climatic, and ethnic differences.8 9 In this study, we compared only the English versions of the AQLQ and the AQLQ(S), and further studies should be conducted to confirm the finding in other languages.
If the aim of a study is to compare burden of illness in a cross-sectional survey, the AQLQ(S) is probably better suited than the AQLQ. Although the discriminative properties of the AQLQ are strong and the patient-specific activities are only 5 of the 11 activity questions, individualized questions mean that the types and strenuousness of activities vary between patients.
The AQLQ(S) is also probably more appropriate than the AQLQ for long-term (> 1 year) clinical trials, cohort studies, and monitoring, when patients' activities and priorities may change with time. For shorter periods, the decision becomes more difficult, and it is for each investigator to decide which priorities are more important. Responsiveness data from the two instruments are very similar, and, therefore, sample sizes for the AQLQ(S) (both parallel-group and crossover studies) will be very similar to those required for the AQLQ.2 Although it is more time-consuming to elicit patient-specific activities, the inclusion of these questions enables patients to feel that things that are important to them are being taken into consideration, and this may enhance compliance.
Most of these advantages and disadvantages are only speculative. Until further studies can provide evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of the two instruments in different clinical settings, the choice must rest on the individual clinician or investigator.
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| Footnotes |
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Received for publication August 26, 1998. Accepted for publication December 29, 1998.
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