Summary

The relationships between pulmonary function, exercise capacity and quality of life in patients with chronic airflow limitation are generally weak. Aiming to determine the effect of treatment in patients, Dr. Gordon Guyatt, Marie Townsend, Dr. Stewart Pugsley and Dr. Larry Chambers have developed the Chronic Respiratory Disease Questionnaire (CRQ).

This validated, precise and reliable instrument is widely used to measure health-related quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic airflow limitations. The tool consists of 20 questions scored on a 7-point Likert-type scale in four domains: dyspnea, fatigue, emotional function and mastery.

The original Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ) is an interviewer-administered instrument. Self-administered versions of the CRQ have since been developed representing advantages in terms of assessment time and costs.

The CRQ is available in four different formats (the original and 3 variations):

1. CRQ, the original interviewer administered (16 minutes)
2. CRQ-IAS, an interviewer-administered standardized version (8 minutes). The main distinction is there is no need for eliciting activities that cause shortness of breath, because all respondents are asked to answer five questions about shortness of breath during certain activities that are the same for all respondents, but still requires an interviewer to administer the questionnaire.
3. CRQ-SAS, a self-administered CRQ including the standardized dyspnea domain (8 minutes). The main distinctions with the CRQ-SAS is that the questionnaire can be completed by the respondent in absence of an interviewer and there is no need for eliciting activities that cause shortness of breath, because all respondents are asked to answer five questions about shortness of breath during certain activities that are the same for all respondents.
4. CRQ-SAI, a self-administered CRQ including the individualized dyspnea domain (16 minutes). The main distinction with the CRQ-SAI is that the questionnaire can be completed by the respondent in absence of an interviewer but is otherwise unchanged in content and order of the questions.

To meet increasing demand for electronic versions of questionnaires, the CRQ is available in electronic format as well as in hardcopy. MILO is working closely with translation companies to review electronic conversions of all questionnaires in its library. MILO is also continuing to increase the portfolio of validated translations for questionnaires.