The Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness Questionnaire (BHQ) aims to assess bronchial hyperresponsiveness in patients with asthma ¹⁾. It is implemented in the Lifelines cohort to assess bronchial hyperresponsiveness in the general population.

BHQ is a 34-item condition-specific questionnaire including 15 questions on respiratory symptoms and 19 on provoking stimuli during the past three months. Each question is scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from no complaints (1) to severe complaints (7).
The questionnaire was originally developed in Dutch and was translated in English. It was developed based on a literature review (English), in-depth interviews (Dutch), and a focus group discussion (Dutch) with asthma patients. The questionnaire was based on the PC20-histamine test as the gold standard. Factor analysis was conducted to identify clusters of interrelated questionnaire items. Spearman rank correlation tests were performed to investigate the relation between PC20-histamine levels and the items ²⁾.