Development and psychometric evaluation of the asthma Action plan questionnaire (AAPQ)

Abstract

Objective

To develop a practical and psychometrically sound tool to evaluate caregiver knowledge of their child’s asthma action plan (AAP).

Methods

A pilot study was conducted in a sample of 40 caregivers of children with asthma to assess the content validity, item difficulty, and item discrimination of the Asthma Action Plan Questionnaire (AAPQ). The inter-rater and intra-rater agreement of the AAPQ’s scoring rubric were also examined. Subsequently, a large-scale study was conducted in a sample of 80 caregivers of children with asthma and 40 caregivers of children without current asthma and no prior exposure to patients with asthma to evaluate the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and known-groups validity of the AAPQ.

Results

The 7-item AAPQ demonstrated acceptable content validity (a scale-content validity index of 0.98) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha =.63 and mean inter-item correlation coefficient of.20) and very strong test-retest reliability over a two-to-four-week period (r = .88, p < .001). The AAPQ discriminated between caregivers of children with asthma and caregivers of children without asthma (M ± SD 8.3 ± 1.6 vs. 4.3 ± 1.7, p < .001, respectively).

Conclusion

The AAPQ is a valid and reliable questionnaire that provides an assessment of caregivers’ knowledge of their child’s AAP and can guide educational interventions by healthcare providers.

Keywords:

• Asthma
• AAP
• knowledge
• assessment
• psychometric

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.