Asthma diagnosis and treatmentValidation of a β-agonist long-term asthma control scale derived from computerized pharmacy data
Section snippets
Methods
There are 2 broad types of validity that can be empirically tested: construct validity and criterion validity (divided into concurrent and predictive validity).11 Concurrent criterion validity requires the existence of another measure of the same attribute. Because no validated measure of long-term control exists, concurrent criterion validity cannot be tested for the β-agonist scale. This study did test the other 2 types of validity: construct validity and predictive validity. Construct
Results
Available characteristics of the 2 samples are shown in Table II. The majority of the patients in the construct validity sample were white, female, well educated (at least some college), nonpoor (annual income >$35,000), and nonsmokers (Table II). Such information was not available for the predictive validity sample because only administrative data were available for these patients.
The numbers of patients in each β-agonist category in each of the cohorts are shown in Table I. Consistent with
Discussion
Asthma severity and asthma control are 2 related but separate constructs.2 A severity assessment scale based on symptoms and pulmonary function can be important in initiating therapy,1 but the same scale without considering therapy cannot be used to assess severity in treated patients.2 Moreover, recent studies emphasize that assessing asthma control is the most important parameter in treated patients because the goal of therapy is asthma control, and asthma control can be achieved in the
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Supported by the Kaiser-Permanente Care Management Institute, Oakland, Calif.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: The authors have declared that they have no conflict of interest.