The Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ30) is the most commonly used physical functioning questionnaire for children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). By revising the CHAQ30 Lam et al. succeeded in decreasing the ceiling effect of this questionnaire in a North American population of children with diverse musculoskeletal diseases.
To examine the score distribution of the revised CHAQ in a population of children with JIA.
In this Dutch multicentre study 72 children with JIA participated (55 girls), with a mean age of 11.0 (+/- 3.1) and a mean disease duration of 4.6 year (+/- 3.7). The score distribution of the original CHAQ30 and four versions of the revised CHAQ was analysed with the median, range and interquartile range (IQR) and visualised with box-and-whisker plots. The normality of the score distribution was tested by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov one-sample test of normality.
Although the addition of 8 more challenging items improved the spread of the scores of the revised CHAQ versions, the original CHAQ30 showed a better distribution of the scores.
The revised CHAQ38 with the distribution characteristics, found in this study, might be especially relevant in interventions for patients with JIA at the mild end of the disability spectrum.