Table 3 Draft ePASD daytime symptom and proximal activity items with selected quotes from child concept elicitation interview participants

Daytime diary (daytime symptoms)

How was your cough today?

[Cough], it’s usually like louder. It’s like a regular cough but probably a little bit louder

Sometimes it’s like only the slightest cough and sometimes it’s like I keep coughing for ages and it starts to hurts

Did you wheeze today?

It’s basically like when I breathe but it’s like because sometimes when I breathe, it like stuff in my throat so it’s like a wheeze or whatever. It’s kind of like pretty low pitch

My breathing goes a bit like a kazoo

Did your chest hurt today?

And if I run too much, my chest is going to start hurting. My chest gets stuffy. It gets tight

I cough, and I cough, and I cough, and I gasp, and I wheeze, and then my lungs hurt

I was coughing too hard, like this, and my chest started to hurt

How was your breathing today?

My breath was like much colder, it felt like, and my chest couldn’t inhale or exhale. Yeah, it was that bad… I think it’s more when I’m actually active

I just can’t breathe and I feel like something’s blocking my throat or something and I can’t get it out

How hard was running, playing, or doing sports today because of your asthma?

It’s normally when I’m playing, like, if I’m at the middle of a basketball game or something else. It just makes me stop running or something

When I’m running or playing sport. When you have to run dead fast or sometimes at night when I’m moving around a lot

Why didn’t you run, play, or do sports today?

It’s a little bit hard. And it’s been times I would want to do stuff and then I can’t because of my asthma. And it’s harder for me to handle it during gym

Or sometimes I will just take the whole PE session off because it [difficulty breathing] gets too bad