Valuing Reduced Asthma Episodes For Adults And Children -- Focus Groups

Key Topic Areas in Focus Groups for Asthma Surveys

(used with the draft survey instruments)

1. How do participants perceive their own or their children’s asthma as a chronic disease?

   1. Do survey questions involving subjective assessments, rating scales, activity interruptions, medication use, and symptoms adequately assess perceptions of asthma as a chronic disease?

2. How do participants perceive acute exacerbations of asthma?

   1. How do they characterize the frequency, duration, severity of episodes and the symptoms experienced?

   2. What are the key adverse outcomes of exacerbations, e.g. the symptoms experienced, or the activity limitations, or what?

   3. How do typical episodes of exacerbation differ from more severe exacerbations?

   4. Do planned survey questions adequately assess the attributes that describe exacerbations?

3. What are participants’ attitudes toward drug therapy?

   1. Perceived effectiveness.

   2. Concerns about side effects, bother, or possible problems from long-term use?

   3. Use of drugs to prevent exacerbations vs. use of drugs to relieve exacerbations.

   4. Attitudes about costs.

   5. How hard is it to recall usage and costs of usage?

4. What activities do participants take to manage their own or their children’s asthma?

   1. How to get respondents to think broadly about this to recall all the things they might do.

   2. Do planned survey questions capture the range of management activities?

5. How do participants react to the hypothetical commodities and payments that would be used to assess willingness to pay?

   1. Plausibility of commodities?

   2. Amount of information needed to make a choice.

   3. Difficulty of answering these questions.

   4. Attitudes toward payment; e.g. feelings that one should not have to pay for medications.