OCCUPATIONAL ASTHMA RESEARCH - A QUESTION OF QUESTIONNAIRES

HSE press release E215:03 - 29 October 2003

While occupational asthma is more widely reported than any other respiratory condition arising from work, there is little agreement among epidemiologists - who rely greatly on questionnaires - about the best questions to ask to identify occupational asthma.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published research carried out by the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh towards the development of a questionnaire to better identify work-related asthma.

The research was based on results from a health study into respiratory conditions in Scotland in the 1990s, and used reports from 12,000 adults collected in the study. Detailed re-analysis of this data was followed by comparison with 100 or so clinical assessments that had been made during the study.

The detailed objectives were to identify respiratory symptoms that tended to be reported together; to link these 'clusters' to clinical syndromes; to try and differentiate between syndromes caused by work and those that weren't; and to differentiate further between exposures in different occupations.

The researchers suggest that future questionnaires could usefully incorporate questions on wheezing and on childhood asthma, questions similar to those used in the government Labour Force Survey, and questions about occupation. Suggestions are made about minimising the omission of data, and about standardising the time periods to which questions refer. Noting the small number of clinical assessments used in the research, the authors advise that any new questionnaire would need pilot testing and validation.

Research Report 164, Questionnaire predictors of asthma and occupational asthma, is available free on the HSE website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr164.htm

NOTE TO EDITORS

This report and the work it describes were funded by the HSE. Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy.

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