PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - H. J. Schünemann AU - R. Goldstein AU - M. J. Mador AU - D. McKim AU - E. Stahl AU - M. Puhan AU - L. E. Griffith AU - B. Grant AU - P. Austin AU - R. Collins AU - G. H. Guyatt TI - A randomised trial to evaluate the self-administered standardised chronic respiratory questionnaire AID - 10.1183/09031936.04.00029704 DP - 2005 Jan 01 TA - European Respiratory Journal PG - 31--40 VI - 25 IP - 1 4099 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/25/1/31.short 4100 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/25/1/31.full SO - Eur Respir J2005 Jan 01; 25 AB - The original chronic respiratory questionnaire (CRQ), one of the most widely used measures of health-related quality of life (HRQL) in chronic respiratory disease (CRD), is traditionally interviewer administered (IA) and includes an individualised dyspnoea domain. The present authors studied the impact of self-administered (SA) and standardised dyspnoea questions on CRQ measurement properties. In a factorial design multicentre trial, 177 patients with CRD (mean age 67.7 yrs; mean forced expiratory volume in one second per cent predicted 44.6%) were randomised to CRQ-IA (n = 86) or CRQ-SA (n = 91), and to initially complete the standardised or individualised items before and after respiratory rehabilitation. While maintaining validity, the CRQ-SA proved more responsive to changes in HRQL than the CRQ-IA in all domains. Compared with the standardised dyspnoea domain, the individualised dyspnoea domain indicated greater responsiveness. The correlations of baseline scores and change scores with other HRQL instruments indicated good validity of the CRQ-SA. In conclusion, self-administration and standardisation of the chronic respiratory questionnaire maintains validity and responsiveness relative to the interviewer-administered chronic respiratory questionnaire. These results challenge the assumption that interviewer-administered questionnaires are superior to self-administered questionnaires in older patients with chronic respiratory disease.