International guidelines on asthma management indicate that the primary goal of treatment should be optimum asthma control. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ).The authors generated a list of all symptoms used to assess control and sent it to 100 asthma clinicians who were members of guidelines committees (18 countries). They scored each symptom for its importance in evaluating asthma control. From the 91 responses, the five highest scoring symptoms were selected for the ACQ. In addition, there is one question on b 2 -agonist use and another on airway calibre (total questions=7). The ACQ was tested in a 9-week observational study of 50 adults with symptomatic asthma. The ACQ and other measures of asthma health status were assessed at baseline, 1, 5 and 9 weeks.In patients whose asthma was stable between clinic visits, reliability of the ACQ was high (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC)=0.90). The questionnaire was very responsive to change in asthma control (p<0.0001). Cross-sectional and longitudinal validity were supported by correlations between the ACQ and other measures of asthma health status being close to a priori predictions.In conclusion, the Asthma Control Questionnaire has strong evaluative and discriminative properties and can be used with confidence to measure asthma control. Eur Respir J 1999; 14: 902±907. International guidelines indicate that the primary goal of asthma treatment is to achieve optimum control (minimization of day and night time symptoms, bronchoconstriction and short-acting b-agonist use) and thus reduce the risk of life-threatening exacerbations and long-term morbidity [1±4]. COCKCROFT and SWYSTUN [5] have pointed out that asthma "control" concerns the adequacy of treatment, whilst "severity" concerns the underlying disease process: "the common perception that well-controlled asthma is synonymous with mild asthma and that poorly controlled asthma is synonymous with severe asthma is erroneous".A number of questionnaires are described as measuring "asthma severity". In some, the term "severity" has been used appropriately [6,7] and the instruments validated against other measures of airway pathology. No questionnaires have been specifically developed and validated to measure asthma control. Without such an instrument, a simple, quantified method for identifying patients at risk and for evaluating the effects of treatment has been lacking.The authors developed the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) using recognized procedures for questionnaire specification, item selection and scaling [8] and the authors have examined the measurement properties necessary for its use in clinical practice, clinical trials and cross-sectional surveys [9]. The aim was to develop a simple questionnaire that could be completed in the clinic without daily recordings of symptoms, medication use and airway calibre.

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The Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire contains 23 items that children with asthma have identified as troublesome in their daily lives. The aim was to evaluate the measurement properties of the questionnaire. The study design consisted of a 9 week single cohort study with assessments at 1, 5 and 9 weeks. Patients participating in the study were fifty-two children, 7-17 years of age, with a wide range of asthma severity. At each clinic visit, a trained interviewer administered the Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire, the Feeling Thermometer, a clinical asthma control questionnaire and measured spirometry. For 1 week before each clinic visit, patients recorded morning peak flow rates, medication use and symptoms in a diary. The Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire was able to detect quality of life changes in those patients who altered their health status either as a result of treatment or natural fluctuations in their asthma (p < 0.001) and to differentiate these patients from those who remained stable (p < 0.0001). It was reproducible in patients who were stable (ICC = 0.95), which also indicates the instrument's strength to discriminate between subjects of different impairment levels. The questionnaire showed good levels of both longitudinal and cross-sectional correlations with the conventional asthma indices and with general quality of life. The results were consistent across individual domains and different age strata. The Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire has good measurement properties and is valid both as an evaluative and a discriminative instrument. It captures aspects of asthma most important to the patient and adds additional information to conventional clinical outcomes.

The 7-item Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) has been validated to measure the goals of asthma management as defined by international guidelines (minimisation of day- and night-time symptoms, activity limitation, beta(2)-agonist use and bronchoconstriction). Responses are given on a 7-point scale and the overall score is the mean of the responses (0=totally controlled, 6=severely uncontrolled). The aim of this analysis was to determine the cut-point on the ACQ that best differentiates between 'well-controlled' and 'not well-controlled' for (a) clinical practice (low risk of missing 'not well-controlled') and (b) clinical trials (low risk of including 'well-controlled'). All 1323 patients who provided data sets at week 12 in the Gaining Optimal Asthma Control (GOAL) clinical trial were included in the analysis. The gold standard for 'well-controlled' was a composite based on the GINA/NIH guidelines and derived from data collected in the clinical trial diaries and clinic records. The analysis showed that the crossover point between 'well-controlled' and 'not well-controlled' is close to 1.00 on the ACQ. However, to be confident that a patient has well-controlled asthma, the optimal cut-point is 0.75 (negative predictive value=0.85). To be confident that the patient has inadequately controlled asthma, the optimal cut-point is 1.50 (positive predictive value=0.88). In conclusion, knowledge of these cut-points will enhance practising clinicians ability to identify patients whose asthma requires additional treatment, enable investigators to enroll poorly controlled patients into studies and for both clinicians and investigators to evaluate whether treatment goals are being achieved.

Methods Impairment of quality of life in adults with asthma was evaluated from structured interviews in which patients were asked to identify the parts of their daily lives affected by asthma. On the basis of these results, an asthma quality of life questionnaire was developed in an interviewer and self administered form and tested for comprehension and acceptability. A total of 150 adults with asthma and with a wide range of airway hyperresponsiveness were enrolled from previous clinical trials, local asthma clinics, and notices in the media.