Quality of life of dogs with skin diseases and their owners. Part 1: development and validation of a questionnaire

The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a questionnaire on the quality of life (QoL) of dogs with skin diseases and their owners. Twenty-six qualitative interviews with owners of dogs affected with severe skin diseases were performed to identify which aspects of the life of dogs and owners were impaired. To assess the clarity of questions, a preliminary 19-item questionnaire (answer range, 0 = none to 3 = severe) was developed following current models from human dermatology and administered to a pilot sample of 20 owners. Questions with a low positive answering rate or statistical relevance were eliminated. A final 15-item questionnaire was distributed to the owners of 41 dogs with atopic dermatitis (AD) and 40 healthy dogs. The severity of the AD was assessed by an owners' severity scale (0-3), a descriptive Visual Analogue Scale for pruritus and CADESI-03. The correlation between these results and those of the questionnaire were analysed. Repeatability was evaluated by testing 44 owners of dogs with different skin diseases on two occasions 3 days apart. The QoL scores for dogs with AD and their owners were significantly different from those for healthy control dogs (P = 0.0001). There was a reliable repeatability of scores (alpha = 0.8). Owner-perceived severity correlated significantly with QoL scores (P = 0.02). The correlation between QoL and pruritus scores was high (>0.36), while that with CADESI-03 was lower (<0.26).