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Performance of commonly used respiratory questionnaire items in a cohort of infants born preterm
Elizabeth Boggs1, Nori Minich2, Anna Maria Hibbs3
1School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA.
Insights
Standard respiratory questionnaire items show good reliability and validity in preterm infants, making them suitable for research. This validation supports their use in studies involving this vulnerable population.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Research
- Neonatology
- Respiratory Medicine
Background:
- Respiratory questionnaires validated in older children are frequently used for preterm infants without prior validation.
- This practice poses a challenge for accurate research data collection in this population.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the test-retest reliability of commonly used respiratory questionnaire items in preterm infants.
- To assess the convergent validity of these questionnaire items within the same cohort.
Main Methods:
- A prospective cohort study assessed 300 preterm infants via telephone questionnaire at six months corrected age.
- Test-retest reliability was examined in a subset of 43 infants via repeat interviews.
- Convergent validity was assessed by analyzing associations between questionnaire responses.
Main Results:
- All analyzed respiratory questions demonstrated fair to strong test-retest reliability.
- Strong convergent validity was observed, with caretakers reporting wheezing also reporting other respiratory events.
- The findings support the utility of these standard items in research.
Conclusions:
- The selected standard respiratory questionnaire items exhibit good performance for research in preterm infants.
- These validated items can be reliably used in future research studies involving preterm infants.
Background:
Items from respiratory questionnaires validated in older children are often used in research studies of preterm infants, although they have not been validated in this population. We aimed to assess both test-retest reliability and convergent validity of a group of commonly used respiratory questionnaire items in a cohort of preterm infants.
Methods:
The health status of 300 preterm infants was assessed by telephone questionnaire as part of a prospective cohort study. The questionnaire items analyzed in this study included six commonly used respiratory questions. The questionnaire responses used in this analysis were from the telephone follow-up in this cohort at six months of age adjusted for prematurity. A repeat interview one to two weeks after this interview was performed in a subset of subjects to assess test-retest reliability. The convergent validity of the respiratory items was also assessed by calculating the associations among the responses to the respiratory questions.
Results:
A total of 43 infants were singletons that met the criteria for test-retest reliability analysis. All of the respiratory questions demonstrated fair to strong test-retest reliability. Among 206 respondents, respiratory questionnaire items also demonstrated strong convergent validity, in that caretakers reporting wheezing or whistling in the chest were significantly more likely to also report other respiratory events.
Conclusions:
This selection of standard respiratory questionnaire items performed well for research purposes in this population.
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