Cough-Specific Quality of Life questionnaires

Cough is a very common problem for children, and parents who might have to wake up continuously during the night and attend to their child. The cough therefore ends up impacting both the child and the parents. This inevitably puts a strain on the whole family’s quality of life.

As young children are unable to verbally express themselves adequately, it is standard practice for parents to be proxy assessors of their young child ’s medical condition. Also, parents/carers are themselves affected by their child’s medical condition and thus the parents’ own QoL is relevant. Thus, QoL measures used in paediatrics concern the parents/carers themselves.

The use of Quality of Life (QoL) tools are now considered essential for high quality clinical research and intervention. These tools help healthcare professionals reliably measure and evaluate the efficacy of their intervention. Unfortunately, there were no valid and reliable measures available to pediatricians – until now. 

Researchers from the University of Queensland in collaboration with healthcare professionals have developed three fully validated Parent Cough-Specific Quality of Life (PC-QoL) questionnaires to assist health care professionals during their research and clinical care:

• PC-QoL-27: the full-scale questionnaire for parents of children with chronic cough,
• PC-QoL-8: the short form of PC-QOL-27 as an 8-item questionnaire, and
• PAC-QoL: the Parent-proxy Children’s Acute Cough-specific QoL questionnaire.

The questionnaires are the first fully validated children’s cough-specific quality of life questionnaire designed for pediatricians and parents of children with chronic and acute cough. They also align with the World Health Organization domains of psychological, physical and social functioning.

Not only are the questionnaires reliable and valid, but they are also sensitive to change over time. This means that they measure the impact of the child’s cough on parents’ and caregivers’ wellbeing and daily life while also mirroring the changes in the cough severity.

Publications

Here is a list of publications to find out more about the PC-QoL questionnaires:

• Newcombe, P., Sheffield, J., & Chang, A. (2013). Parent cough-specific quality of life: Development and validation of a short form. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology , 131 (4), 1069-74.
• Newcombe, P., Sheffield, J., Juniper, E., Marchant, J., Halsted, R., Masters, B., et al. (2008). Development of a Parent-Proxy Quality-of-Life Chronic Cough-Specific Questionnaire. CHEST , 133, 386-395.
• Newcombe, P., Sheffield, J., Juniper, E., Petsky, H., Willis, C., & Chang, A. (2010). Validation of a parent-proxy quality of life questionnaire for paediatric chronic cough (PC-QOL). Thorax .
• Anderson-James, S., Newcombe, P., Marchant, J., O'Grady, K.-A., Acworth, J., Stone, G., et al. (2015). An acute cough-specific quality-of-life questionnaire for children: Development and validation. American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology , 135 (5), 1179-85.

The PC-QoL questionnaires are now available for purchase as licensed downloadable files. To purchase, choose the category of intended use (commercial or non-commercial) from the category menu on the left of this page. You will then be able to select the type of questionnaire you are after: the PC-QoL-27, PC-QoL-8 or PAC-QoL. License terms and conditions do apply, so please read these carefully on the product page. Payment is via credit card only.