TY - JOUR T1 - Development and validation of the Adolescent Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AAQOL) JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 52 LP - 58 DO - 10.1183/09031936.01.17100520 VL - 17 IS - 1 AU - C. Rutishauser AU - S.M. Sawyer AU - L. Bond AU - C. Coffey AU - G. Bowes Y1 - 2001/01/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/17/1/52.abstract N2 - Current asthma-specific quality of life questionnaires have major conceptual and methodological deficiencies for use in adolescents. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the “Adolescent Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AAQOL)”, specifically developed for adolescents with asthma.One-hundred and eleven adolescents with frequent-episodic or persistent asthma aged 12–17 yrs were recruited from three tertiary paediatric asthma clinics. The standardized multi-step method consisted of: 1) item selection including semistructured interviews (n=14); 2) item reduction and validation (n=66); and 3) assessment of reproducibility (n=31). Item reduction was performed applying the clinical impact method.The 32 item AAQOL covers six domains: symptoms, medication, physical activities, emotion, social interaction and positive effects. There was high internal consistency for the six domains (α=0.70–0.90) and for the total score (α=0.93). Test-retest reliability was high for all domain scores (r=0.76–0.85) and the total score (r=0.90), indicating high reproducibility of the AAQOL. There was high correlation with the paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (ρ=0.81) which focuses primarily on symptoms and emotional well-being. There was weak to moderate correlation with clinical parameters of asthma severity (ρ=0.25–0.65).The 32-item Adolescent Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire is a valid, developmentally age-appropriate and dimensionally comprehensive asthma-specific quality of life measure for use in adolescents.This research was supported by Vic-Health (Australia), Asthma Ligue of Zurich, Novartis-Jubilee Foundation, and Theodor and Ida Herzog-Egli Foundation (Switzerland). ER -