The exploration and development of a causal model for asthma morbidity by confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis utilizing common clinical variables

The current study is an attempt to develop a causal model for asthma morbidity incorporating current symptom severity, quality of care indicators, and previous severe disease as explanatory variables. The study population consists of children who presented to an emergency department for asthma. Data was obtained from four survey instruments. The data included demographic information, as well as information regarding asthma history, current symptoms and treatment, medical management, as well as healthcare seeking behaviors and asthma care since the index visit including urgent care. All observed variables were assigned to one of the latent variable categories and then subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and path analysis (PA) to develop the causal model. The presence of severe current symptoms and previous severe disease were significantly related to high quality of care, however, the only factor (latent variable) that was significantly related to six month morbidity was prior severe disease.