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Published on: August 7, 2017
Parental questionnaires provided reliable data on childhood asthma compared with national registers
Frida Strömberg Celind1, Styliana Vasileiadou1, Emma Goksör1
1Department of Pediatrics, Queen Silvia Children's Hospital, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Insights
Parental questionnaires show strong agreement with medication records for childhood asthma. However, national patient registers may miss primary care diagnoses, highlighting the reliability of well-designed parent surveys for asthma data.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Medicine
- Epidemiology
- Health Informatics
Background:
- Childhood asthma knowledge often relies on questionnaires.
- Validating questionnaire data against national registers is crucial for accuracy.
- Swedish population-based cohort study provides longitudinal data.
Purpose of the Study:
- Assess agreement between parental asthma reports and national Swedish registers.
- Evaluate the reliability of questionnaire data for childhood asthma research.
- Identify limitations of national health registers for capturing asthma diagnoses.
Main Methods:
- Prospective, longitudinal study of children born in 2003 (Children of Western Sweden cohort).
- Parental questionnaires administered at multiple time points (6 months to 12 years).
- Linkage of 3634 children to Swedish Prescribed Drug Register (SPDR) and National Patient Register (NPR).
Main Results:
- High agreement (kappa > 0.68) between parental reports and SPDR for asthma medication (any and maintenance).
- Low agreement (30.5%) between NPR outpatient diagnoses and questionnaire-based asthma.
- Low agreement (32.8%) between NPR diagnoses and SPDR dispensed medication.
- Hospitalizations for obstructive diseases were infrequent after early childhood.
Conclusions:
- Parental questionnaires demonstrate reliable data for childhood asthma medication.
- The National Patient Register may underestimate asthma diagnoses due to exclusion of primary care data.
- Well-designed parental questionnaires are valuable tools for childhood asthma research.
Background:
Much of our knowledge of childhood asthma comes from questionnaire-based studies. Our main aim was to assess the agreement between parental-reported data at 12 years of age and data from two national Swedish registers.
Methods:
Data were obtained from the prospective, longitudinal, population-based Children of Western Sweden cohort, which focused on children born in 2003. The parents answered questionnaires at six months and one, four, eight and 12 years of age. Personal identity numbers linked 3634 children to the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register (SPDR) and the National Patient Register (NPR).
Results:
At 12 years of age, there was substantial overall agreement between the asthma medication reported by the parents in the questionnaire and the SPDR for any asthma medication (94.8%, kappa 0.71) and maintenance treatment (95.3%, kappa 0.68). In contrast, the agreement between the outpatient asthma diagnoses in the NPR and the questionnaire-based asthma was 30.5% and it was 32.8% between the NPR and the dispensed asthma medication in the SPDR. Hospitalization was rare for obstructive diseases after early childhood, and 38.2% of the 12-year-old children only received a short-acting beta agonist, with no maintenance treatment.
Conclusion:
There was good agreement between the questionnaire-based data on asthma medication and the national drug register, but the National Patient Register provided incomplete information on asthma diagnoses, probably because it did not include primary care diagnoses. The results show that well-constructed parental questionnaires can provide reliable data on childhood asthma.
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