Validation of a questionnaire on asthma knowledge, attitudes and practices among parents of children with asthma for the asthma pediatric education program of the Philippine Heart Center.

Background: Asthma is a serious public health problem worldwide. A number of health - related instruments have been used to categorized knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about asthma. The purpose of this study is to determine the reliability of a standard parental asthma questionnaire based on the Asthma Pediatric Education Program (ASPEP).

Methods: Parents of asthmatic children were included in the study. The development process began by identifying relevant content areas based on the lectures on ASPEP. An expert panel assessed the content validity of the questionnaire. The subjects were asked to answer the questions. After the initial validation, a re-test was done after two weeks using the same subjects. The original questionnaire was reformatted in such away so as to avoid familiarity bias. A final list of 10 items for the knowledge domain, 10 items for the attitude domain and 10 items for the practices domain were included in the final research tool.

Results: The overall reliability was high in the knowledge domain (Cronbach's alpha = 0.79). The overall internal reliability in the attitude domain was high ( Cronbach's alpha = 0.91). In the practice domain, all subscale items were highly reliable and consistent ( Cronbach's alpha = 0.92). The overall internal reliability of the questionnaire was high  (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89).

Conclusion: The questionnaire that we developed in this study is a reliable and useful tool to measure the knowledge, attitudes and practices of parents of asthmatic children.