Analyzing symptom data in indoor air questionnaires for primary schools

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health
• Epidemiology
• Pediatric Health

Background:

• Assessing indoor environment problems often relies on symptom questionnaires, primarily for adults.
• Developing parent-administered indoor air questionnaires for primary school pupils requires robust data analysis methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore optimal methods for analyzing and reporting symptom data from children's indoor environments.
• To develop and validate a parent-administered indoor air questionnaire for primary school pupils.

Main Methods:

• A 25-question indoor air questionnaire was administered to parents in case and control primary schools.
• Symptom data underwent analysis including prevalence, test-retest repeatability (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient - ICC), and Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
• Six symptom scores were developed and compared for their ability to rank schools based on symptom prevalence.

Main Results:

• The number of symptoms was reduced to 17, and six symptom scores were created.
• Four symptom scores (respiratory, lower respiratory, eye, and general symptoms) analyzed dichotomously demonstrated effectiveness.
• These four scores adequately captured symptom data diversity and between-school differences in prevalence.

Conclusions:

• Dichotomized analysis of specific symptom scores provides a reliable method for assessing indoor air quality issues in schools.
• The developed methodology supports the creation of effective parent-administered questionnaires for pediatric indoor environmental health studies.