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Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea

BACKGROUND: Because there are no child-friendly, validated, self-report measures of dyspnea or breathlessness, we developed, and provided initial validation, of three, 7-item, pictorial scales depicting three sub-constructs of dyspnea: throat closing, chest tightness, and effort. METHODS: We develop...

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Autores principales: McGrath, Patrick J, Pianosi, Paul T, Unruh, Anita M, Buckley, Chloe P
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1208906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16131402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-5-33
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author McGrath, Patrick J
Pianosi, Paul T
Unruh, Anita M
Buckley, Chloe P
author_facet McGrath, Patrick J
Pianosi, Paul T
Unruh, Anita M
Buckley, Chloe P
author_sort McGrath, Patrick J
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Because there are no child-friendly, validated, self-report measures of dyspnea or breathlessness, we developed, and provided initial validation, of three, 7-item, pictorial scales depicting three sub-constructs of dyspnea: throat closing, chest tightness, and effort. METHODS: We developed the three scales (Throat closing, Chest tightness, and Effort) using focus groups with 25 children. Subsequently, seventy-nine children (29 children with asthma, 30 children with cystic fibrosis. and 20 children who were healthy) aged 6 to 18 years rated each picture in each series, using a 0–10 scale. In addition, each child placed each picture in each series on a 100-cm long Visual Analogue Scale, with the anchors "not at all" and "a lot". RESULTS: Children aged eight years or older rated the scales in the correct order 75% to 98% correctly, but children less than 8 years of age performed unreliably. The mean distance between each consecutive item in each pictorial scale was equal. CONCLUSION: Preliminary results revealed that children aged 8 to 18 years understood and used these three scales measuring throat closing, chest tightness, and effort appropriately. The scales appear to accurately measure the construct of breathlessness, at least at an interval level. Additional research applying these scales to clinical situations is warranted.
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spelling pubmed-12089062005-09-15 Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea McGrath, Patrick J Pianosi, Paul T Unruh, Anita M Buckley, Chloe P BMC Pediatr Research Article BACKGROUND: Because there are no child-friendly, validated, self-report measures of dyspnea or breathlessness, we developed, and provided initial validation, of three, 7-item, pictorial scales depicting three sub-constructs of dyspnea: throat closing, chest tightness, and effort. METHODS: We developed the three scales (Throat closing, Chest tightness, and Effort) using focus groups with 25 children. Subsequently, seventy-nine children (29 children with asthma, 30 children with cystic fibrosis. and 20 children who were healthy) aged 6 to 18 years rated each picture in each series, using a 0–10 scale. In addition, each child placed each picture in each series on a 100-cm long Visual Analogue Scale, with the anchors "not at all" and "a lot". RESULTS: Children aged eight years or older rated the scales in the correct order 75% to 98% correctly, but children less than 8 years of age performed unreliably. The mean distance between each consecutive item in each pictorial scale was equal. CONCLUSION: Preliminary results revealed that children aged 8 to 18 years understood and used these three scales measuring throat closing, chest tightness, and effort appropriately. The scales appear to accurately measure the construct of breathlessness, at least at an interval level. Additional research applying these scales to clinical situations is warranted. BioMed Central 2005-08-30 /pmc/articles/PMC1208906/ /pubmed/16131402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-5-33 Text en Copyright © 2005 McGrath et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
McGrath, Patrick J
Pianosi, Paul T
Unruh, Anita M
Buckley, Chloe P
Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
title Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
title_full Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
title_fullStr Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
title_full_unstemmed Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
title_short Dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
title_sort dalhousie dyspnea scales: construct and content validity of pictorial scales for measuring dyspnea
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1208906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16131402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-5-33
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