Child Health Measurement Project

Child Health Information Reporting Project

The Child Health Information Reporting Project (CHIRP) was a study undertaken by the Child Health Measurement Project in an effort to "enhance and advance" the field of pediatric outcome research. The focus of the project was to closely explore a question of considerable debate in the area of outcomes measurement:

At what age do children become dependable reporters of their own health status?

To determine whether children can be reporters of their own health status, we assessed acceptability of child-report asthma-related health status questionnaires to children and parents, feasibility of questionnaire administration to and completion by children, and age-specific psychometric quality of asthma-related health status data obtained from children using a child-report version of the Children's Health Survey for Asthma (CHSA), the CHSA-Child Version (CHSA-C).

Data were collected between December 2002 and December 2004. We interviewed children with asthma between the ages of 7 to 16 and their parents. We obtained data from over 400 child-parent pairs. Data analysis is complete and our primary findings have been published:

Olson LM, Radecki L, Frintner MP, Weiss KB, Korfmacher J, Siegel RM. At what age can children report dependably on their asthma health status? Pediatrics 2007; 119(1):e93-e102.

Psychometric properties of the CHSA-C have also been recently published:

Radecki L, Olson LM, Frintner MP, Weiss K. Reliability and validity of the Children's Health Survey for Asthma - Child Version. Pediatric Asthma, Allergy & Immunology. 2008;21(2):89-98

Manuscript development of other important findings from CHIRP is currently underway. We have also made a number of presentations at scientific meetings in order to disseminate knowledge about the project.

CHIRP funding is provided through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. We are most grateful to the children and families who have participated in interviews and shared their thoughts and feelings about living with asthma and the many providers and schools that helped us recruit children with asthma.

For information on children with allergies and asthma, visit the AAP Section on Allergy and Immunology