Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Department, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto, Porto.
Allergy. 2010 Aug;65(8):1042-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1398-9995.2009.02310.x. Epub 2010 Feb 1.
The Control of Allergic Rhinitis and Asthma Test (CARAT) was developed to be used in the concurrent management of these diseases, as recommended by the Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) guidelines. However, it was necessary to statistically identify and remove redundant questions and to evaluate the new version's factor structure, internal consistency and concurrent validity.
In this cross-sectional study 193 adults with allergic rhinitis and asthma from 15 outpatient clinics in Portugal were included. The CARAT questionnaire was reduced using descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis and internal consistency. Spearman's correlations were used to compare the CARAT scores with a medical evaluation and other measures of control, including the Asthma Control Questionnaire and symptoms' visual analogue scales. The performance against physician rating of control was summarized using the area under the curve (AUC) from receiver operating characteristic analysis. In addition, CARAT was compared with the physician's decision to reduce, maintain or increase treatment.
The reduced version has 10 questions and 2 factors (CARAT10). The Cronbach's alpha was 0.85. All correlation coefficients of CARAT10 and factors with the different measures of control met the a priori predictions, ranging from 0.58 to 0.79. The AUC was 0.82. For the physician's decision groups of reduce, maintain or increase treatment, the mean (IC95%) scores of CARAT10 were 24 (21.4;26.6), 21 (19.4;21.9) and 15 (13.6;16.5), respectively.
CARAT10 has high internal consistency and good concurrent validity, making it useful to compare groups in clinical studies.
过敏性鼻炎和哮喘控制测试（CARAT）是为了符合过敏性鼻炎及其对哮喘的影响（ARIA）指南的建议，用于同时管理这些疾病而开发的。然而，有必要对冗余问题进行统计识别和剔除，并评估新版本的因子结构、内部一致性和同时效度。
本横断面研究纳入了葡萄牙 15 家门诊的 193 名过敏性鼻炎和哮喘成人患者。采用描述性分析、探索性因子分析和内部一致性对 CARAT 问卷进行了简化。使用 Spearman 相关系数比较了 CARAT 评分与医疗评估和其他控制措施（包括哮喘控制问卷和症状的视觉模拟量表）的相关性。使用接收者操作特征分析中的曲线下面积（AUC）总结了 CARAT 与医生对控制的评价之间的关系。此外，还比较了 CARAT 与医生决定减少、维持或增加治疗的关系。
简化后的版本有 10 个问题和 2 个因子（CARAT10）。Cronbach's alpha 为 0.85。CARAT10 和因子与不同控制措施的所有相关系数均符合先验预测，范围从 0.58 到 0.79。AUC 为 0.82。对于减少、维持或增加治疗的医生决策组，CARAT10 的平均（95%CI）得分分别为 24（21.4;26.6）、21（19.4;21.9）和 15（13.6;16.5）。
CARAT10 具有较高的内部一致性和良好的同时效度，使其在临床研究中可用于比较组间差异。
