Accuracy of parental and child's report of changes in symptoms of childhood asthma.

ABSTRACT

This cohort study was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of parental and child's reports of changes in asthma symptoms. Fifty three asthmatic children and their parents were interviewed at enrollment and after 4 and 8 weeks. The outcomes were parental and child's reports of changes in asthma symptoms, changes in mean daily symptom scores and changes in pulmonary function. Among patients 6 to 10 years old, parental reports correlated more strongly than child's reports with changes in mean daily symptom scores (r 0.54 vs 0.23). In patients aged 11 years or older, parental and child's reports correlated comparably with changes in mean daily symptom scores (r 0.63 vs 0.57). In both age groups, neither parental nor child's reports correlated significantly with changes in pulmonary function. The relatively low coefficient of correlation between parental,child report with symptom score suggests that these may not be very accurate reflections of change in asthma status. Nevertheless, for the age group 6 to 10 year, parental reports are more reliable than child reports, while both are comparable in the age group 11-18 years.