Caretaker expectations and the management of pediatric asthma in the inner city: A scale development study

Abstract

Asthma, a very serious health condition, results in morbidity and mortality that disproportionately affect children living in inner-city areas in the United States. The National Cooperative Inner-City Asthma Study examined a variety of factors related to pediatric asthma. This article describes a substudy that developed a brief three-dimensional scale, the Caretaker Expectations Regarding the Management of Pediatric Asthma Scale, to assess expectations of caretakers of children with asthma regarding management of the condition. Modest evidence about reliability and validity is provided. This article also presents an approach for developing measures of these important psychosocial constructs in disease-specific research situations.