COUGH Development of a symptom specific health status measure for patients with chronic cough: Leicester Cough

Background: Chronic cough is a common condition which has a significant impact on quality of life. Assessment and management are hampered by the absence of well validated outcome measures. The development and validation of the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), a self-completed health related quality of life measure of chronic cough, is presented. Methods: Patients with chronic cough were recruited from outpatient clinics. The development of the LCQ consisted of three phases: phase 1 (item generation); phase 2 (item reduction, allocation of items to domains and validation of questionnaire); phase 3 (repeatability and responsiveness testing of final version of questionnaire). Results: Phase 1: Literature review, multidisciplinary team meeting and 15 structured interviews with chronic cough patients generated 44 items (LCQ1) with a 7 point Likert response scale. Phase 2: 104 chronic cough outpatients completed the LCQ1 along with an importance rating for each item. The clinical impact factor method was used for item reduction to 19 items (LCQ2: final version). These items were divided into three domains (physical, psychological and social) following expert opinion. Internal reliability, as assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, varied between 0.79 and 0.89. Con-current validity was high when the LCQ2 (n=56) was compared with a cough visual analogue scor