St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ)
| Name of questionnaire | St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) |
| Type of questionnaire-description | Disease-specific instrument designed to measure impact on overall health, daily life, and perceived well-being in patients with obstructive airways disease. |
| Number of items | 50 items |
| Number of domains & categories | 2 parts (3 components) |
| Name of categories/domains | Part 1 : Symptoms component (frequency & severity) with a 1, 3 or 12-month recall (best performance with 3- and 12-month recall); Part 2: Activities that cause or are limited by breathlessness; Impact components (social functioning, psychological disturbances resulting from airways disease) refer to current state as the recall. |
| Scaling of items | Part I (Symptoms): several scales; Part II (Activity and Impacts): dichotomous (true/false) except last question (4-point Likert scale) |
| Scoring | Scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more limitations. |
| Test-retest reproducibility | Yes. For the American version, the intraclass correlations were 0.795 to 0.900 |
| Internal consistency | Reported (Jones PW, Quirk FH, Baveystock CM, Littlejohns P. A self-complete measure of health status for chronic airflow limitation. Am Rev Respir Dis 1992;145;1321-1327). For the American version, Cronbach's α was > 0.70 for all components (Barr JT, Schumacher GE, Freeman S, LeMoine M, Bakst AW, Jones PW. American translation, modification, and validation of the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire. Clin Ther. 2000 Sep, 22(9):1121-45). |
| Validity | Reported: - Significant correlations between total score and presence of cough, sputum, and wheeze; - Significant correlations between symptom, activity, and impact domains and other measures of disease activity (FEV1, FVC, SaO2 at rest, 6-MWD, MRC dyspnea grade, anxiety score, depression score, Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) total score, SIP physical and psychosocial domains) (Jones PW, Quirk FH, Baveystock CM, Littlejohns P. A self-complete measure of health status for chronic airflow limitation. Am Rev Respir Dis 1992, 145: 1321-1327; Jones PW, Quirk FH, Baveystock CM. The St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire. Resp Med 1991, 85(suppl):25-31). |
| Minimally important difference | Based on empirical data and interviews with patients, a mean change score of 4 units is associated with slightly efficacious treatment, 8 units for moderately efficacious change and 12 units for very efficacious treatment (Jones PW and the Nedocromil Sodium Quality of Life Study Group. Quality of life, symptoms, and pulmonary function in asthma: long-term treatment with nedocromil sodium examined in a controlled multicentre trial. Eur Respir J 1994, 7:55-62; Jones PW. Interpreting thresholds for a clinically significant change in health status in asthma and COPD. Eur Respir J. 2002 Mar, 19(3):398-404). |
| Language | English (UK) |
| Translations in other languages (if yes, then list the languages) | Available in ~77 other translations at St George's University of London (SGUL) website: Click Here. Requests for SGRQ translations should be sent to Yvonne Forde: sgrq@sgul.ac.uk. |
| Developer name | PW Jones, F Quirk, C Baveystock |
| Developer contact information | Paul W. Jones Division of Clinical Science St George’s University of London Cranmer Terrace, London, SW17 0RE, UK E-mail: pjones@sgul.ac.uk |
| Availability of questionnaire: needs permission from developer, cost or freely available | The St. George's University of London Medical School grants permission for clinicians to use the SGRQ without charge. For details on how to obtain a license to use the SGRQ or for an electronic copy of the Excel-based scoring Calculator, please send an email to Yvonne Forde, email: sgrq@sgul.ac.uk. The Medical School charges commercial organizations a license fee for use of the SGRQ. |
| References (including original publication) | Jones PW, Quirk FH, Baveystock CM. The St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire. Resp Med 1991;85 (suppl B):2531. Jones PW, Quirk FH, Baveystock CM, Littlejohns P. A self-complete measure of health status for chronic airflow limitation. Am Rev Respir Dis 1992;145;1321-1327. Barr JT, Schumacher GE, Freeman S, LeMoine M, Bakst AW, Jones PW. American translation, modification, and validation of the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire. Clin Ther. 2000 Sep, 22(9):1121-45. |
| Limitations | - |
| Link to the questionnaire (if available) | http://www.healthstatus.sgul.ac.uk |
| Other comments | One item asks about sleep disturbance as a result of cough and breathing problems. SGRQ has been used successfully in patients with COPD, asthma and bronchiectasis. SGRQ has been validated for telephone administration (Anie KA, Jones PW, Hilton SR, Anderson HR. A computer-assisted telephone interview technique for assessment of asthma morbidity and drug use in adult asthma. J Clin Epidemiol 1996;49:653-6) and computer based presentation (Meguro M and Jones PW--unpublished, per SGUL website), but not for postal administration. |
| Alternate versions | A shorter 40-item version (SGRQ-C) which does not specify a recall period has been validated speciffically for COPD patients. It produces scores equivalent to the existing instrument (Meguro M, Barley EA, Spencer S, Jones PW. Development and validation of an improved COPD-specific version of the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire. Chest 2006;132: 456-463) and minimally important difference is the same (Click Here). Larger studies comparing the two questionnaires are needed to confirm these initial findings. |
