RESEARCH ARTICLE
Validation of a Clinical Instrument for Measuring the Severity of Acute Bronchitis in Children – The BSS-ped
Siegfried Lehrl1, Peter Kardos2, Heinrich Matthys3, Wolfgang Kamin4, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 12
First Page: 50
Last Page: 66
Publisher ID: TORMJ-12-50
DOI: 10.2174/1874306401812010050
Article History:
Received Date: 1/8/2018Revision Received Date: 8/9/2018
Acceptance Date: 13/9/2018
Electronic publication date: 29/10/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
There are no validated standardised clinical procedures for severity measurement of acute bronchitis in children. The “BSS-ped”, a short version of the physician-rated assessment scale BSS (Bronchitis Severity Scale), can fill this gap, if it is valid.
Objective:
To examine the scale´s validity.
Methods:
Investigations were planned according to classical clinical-psychometric validity criteria including a formal competence evaluation of the scale´s authors and statistical analyses of data from 78 patients aged 1-6 and diagnosed with “acute bronchitis”. Cross-validation was provided by analysis of data from 70 children with matching age, sex and diagnosis. All children were examined three times (day 0, 3-5 and 7) using the BSS-ped in addition to other clinical and psychometric monitoring procedures.
Results:
The evidently high level of expertise of the scale’s authors substantiates pronounced content validity and relevance of the BSS-ped and its items. The validity criterion, i.e. to reflect the unidimensional severity of acute bronchitis and its change using the BSS-ped score, was fulfilled. There were substantial correlations with other scales measuring the current health-related quality of life, as well as satisfaction and success of treatment. Severity change prognoses for acute bronchitis under placebo and an active substance were correct. The BSS-ped was found to be a feasible instrument because it can be repeated at short intervals (minute range) without any special technical aids or extended training.
Conclusion:
The BSS-ped is a valid procedure for measuring the severity of acute bronchitis in children.
