Validación de un cuestionario de conocimientos acerca de asma

Validación de un cuestionario de conocimientos acerca de asma

Background. An educative intervention destined to increase the knowledge in asthma allows the children and/or its parents to acquire abilities that allow to prevent and/or to handle the asthmatic attacks, decreasing the morbidity produced by the disease. Nevertheless, we don't account with a validated instrument that allows us to quantify the level of asthma knowledge.

Objective. To develop and to validate a questionnaire of knowledge about asthma to be filled out by the parents and/or people in charge of the care of the asthmatic pediatric patients.

Material and method. The 17 items that conform the questionnaire were obtained after literature review, realization of focal groups, the professional experience of the investigators and the realization of pilot studies. The face, content, and concurrent validity of the instrument was evaluated; we also determined the factor structure, test-retest reproducibility, and sensitivity to change of the questionnaire.

Results. We included 120 patients with average age of 4,5 +3,7 years. The factor analysis demonstrated a probable structure of three factors, that altogether explain 85% of the total variance of the results. The face and content validity was based on the concept of a multi-disciplinary group of experts in the field, The concurrent validity was demonstrated by the ability of the questionnaire to distinguish low from high knowledge parents. Test-retest reproducibility and sensitivity to change were demonstrated comparing scores of the questionnaire filled out in two different occasions.

Conclusions. The questionnaire of knowledge of asthma developed in the study is a useful and reliable tool to quantify the basal level of asthma knowledge in parents of asthmatic children, and to determine the effectiveness of an educative intervention destined to increase the knowledge and understanding of the disease.